The story in three lines. Lan and Inkling fold Kami into a little book and step into a kindergarten garden in the 1840s, where small children fold coloured squares and every flower bed is empty for the autumn. Emil wants a flower that will not wilt for his frightened little sister; Lan nearly tears one out before Kami stops her. Cornelia, Mark, Crinkle and Presso help him fold one untorn square into a tulip that stands up, and Inkling finds Fröbel's three kinds of folding in it.

One question to ask. "What three things was the tulip?" The answer the story wants: a thing you know (a flower, a fold of life), two sides that match (a fold of beauty), and a half you can measure (a fold of knowledge). If your child names only one, ask where the half was hiding.

One thing to do at the table. You need one square of paper. Fold it corner to corner, then lift one side corner up past the top point. Now try to make the other side its mirror. If it goes crooked, open it and look for the first crease: it remembers. Then fold a second square into a pattern instead: fold all four corners into the middle and turn it over. Ask which one is a thing, which one is a pattern, and where the halves are in each.

The grown-up layer. Friedrich Fröbel opened a play school for small children in Bad Blankenburg in 1837 and called it a kindergarten in 1840. Folding squares was one of its occupations, and the folds were grouped as folds of life, of beauty and of knowledge (sometimes called folds of truth). Historians are not sure how much of the folding system was his own and how much his followers added, which is worth telling a child: we know the idea, but not exactly who had each part of it.

Let your child tell the story back in their own words first.