SINA® consultant for Fröbel toys
Certified educator / educator for playing
Berlin - Germany

Born 1928 in Leipzig, married with two daughters, many grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Nursery-school teacher, educational and nursery-school educational studies at Humboldt University in Berlin, graduated as certified educator.

Long-year experience as a college lecturer in training nursery-school teachers. PhD in educational studies at the Akademie der Pädagogischen Wissenschaften
der DDR (Academy of Educational Sciences of the GDR), emphasis on construction games. Research assistant at the same institution.

Long-year experience in the training and in further education of nursery-school teachers.

Development of construction kits and special bricks, which refer to Fröbel's ideas of unity and variety. Interpretation of Friedrich Fröbel's laying materials, and development of games at SINA®.

Parallel to the educational work and to the work as a trainer, a big interest for editorial work developed. Therefore more than 130 articles for scientific magazines and articles for parents and educators were written between 1950 and 1989.

Personal publications in the field of nursery-school education on subjects like:
- The childrens' friend from Bad Liebenstein
- The birth of the kindergarten idea
- The first kindergarten educator was a man
- Work in the family - Games and toys for children
- How puppets should be designed
- Manuscripts for speech and for broadcasting for the tv show "Elternsprechstunde" ("Consulting hours for parents") followed

Some of the most important publications:
"Construction in the kindergarten" (1963)
"The kid in nursery-school" (1964) as a co-author
"Plan for education and instruction for the GDR kindergarten" (1963/64) as a co-author
"Nursery-school manual: 'I will be a schoolkid soon'" (1967/69/70)
"Children playing" (1968)
"Collective education in the play of younger nursery-school children" (thesis) (1973/75)
"Friedrich Fröbel, his gifts for playing in the kindergartens of the GDR" (1977)
"Children want to construct" (1995), Co-author R. Diedrich
"Little school of laying games" (2002), Co-author H. Thier

I never received any awards or prizes. For me the interest the attendees show at my seminars for the game pedagogy of Fröbel is a high reward, which shows that I have communicated my ideas in a good way. My pleasure of working with the Fröbel material was the prize of work. My husband Hellmut Thier has always been my assistant and co-worker.

My message:
When I got in contact in kindergarten with all the colored wooden things, with paper, when I learned how to use needle and thread, which my kindergarten lady took out of her big blue cupboard, I could not imagine that Fröbel's gifts for playing, his materials and games would accompany and fascinate me through my whole life. My vision is that these wonderful, simple things for children will be conserved also in our moving, computer controlled world, and that there will still be people and
toy companies, that will produce and distribute Fröbel toys. Children in this world would miss something in the development of infant life, if there were no Fröbel anymore. Fröbel and his ideas will live on!