<P> President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Henry Blow minister to Brazil in 1869, and Susan went with him as his secretary . During the next fifteen months, she quickly learned Portuguese . Her bilingual ability helped to ease trade communications between Brazil and the United States . </P> <P> In 1870, along with her mother and siblings, Blow went abroad to Europe; while there she began studying the philosophies of Hegel and the American Transcendentalists . However, while abroad she came across the kindergarten teaching methods of German idealist and philosopher Friedrich Froebel . Froebel believed in "learning - through - play" and cognitive development . Susan was inspired to bring these ideas back to St. Louis and her father offered to set up a kindergarten as a private school . Susan felt she could better serve children through the public school system . </P> <P> In 1871 Blow traveled to New York, where she spent a year being trained at the New York Normal Training Kindergarten, operated by Froebel devotee Maria Kraus - Boelté . Blow returned to St. Louis in 1873 and opened the nation's first public kindergarten in Des Peres School in Carondelet, which by then had been annexed by the City of St. Louis . With the help of her two assistants, Mary Timberlake and Cynthia Dozier, Blow directed and taught a kindergarten class consisting of forty - two students . Not only did she pay all expenses to keep the kindergarten running that first year, she was not compensated for her hard work and dedication . About 150 women also volunteered to work at Blow's kindergartens between 1876 - 1877 . </P> <P> In the kindergarten class, students learned from games and songs that Susan translated from Froebel's original German . Students played with different shaped blocks, papers and clay, and tried weaving and modeling to improve dexterity . Children also grew seeds in an outdoor garden . Blow would tell stories from the Bible or myths and legends . The classroom was much more cheerful than upper grades . The experimental class was a success and quickly grew . Within three years, her kindergarten system had fifty teachers and over one thousand students, and by 1883 every public school in St. Louis had a kindergarten . </P>

When did the first public kindergarten open in the united states