"Come, let us live with our children!" (Kommt lasst uns unsern Kindern leben!)

"Come, let us live with our children" is the motto of the Title-Page and of the whole "Mutter- und Koselieder". At the very bottom of this picture is a woman sitting with small children around her. The picture illustrates the growth of the children. Young children, a girl and a boy are occupied with games typical of that time. The little girl is pouring water on to a lily and the boy is climbing a tree to collect birds eggs. A little higher up stands an older girl and boy. They show the same characters as the younger children, the girl is contemplative and the boy physically active. She is looking at a lily, he is stretching out to catch one. The girl is standing on a sphere, the boy on a cube. This will illustrate the "Law of Opposites" and the male and female principles; the male is active, the female is contemplative. As mediators between the opposites the lilies are trying to bridge over the gap.

You also can see the Front-Page as gate or the front of a cathedral. Symbolically, a gate is a mediator between the earthly and the spiritual world. A cathedral can be seen as a mediator between earth and heaven. Cathedrals are often dedicated to the Virgin Mary and some times called "The Virgin Mary's Garden". Fröbel thought that a child should grow up in a real garden like a Paradise Garden but also grow a Paradise Garden in itself, that is from the sensual world to the spiritual.

Insted of the Cherubim who watch the gate of the biblical Paradise Fröbel has a small angel with an olive branch in his hand. Maybe it is "The Childs Angel", Fröbel thought that a small child and an angel were inseparable. The sun and the moon surrounded by stars shine over the scene. The three towers with lilies ar striving to reach the heaven. The spires of lilies are three, a very common number with Fröbel. The Title-Page is built up geometrically, like an icon. If you draw a line from the stool with three legs at the very bottom of the picture to the little girl with the water-jug, along the bows of the lilies3) and the climbing boy back to the three-legged stol you find a perfect circle. The whole Title-Page has a rectangular form.

In a sense the Title-Page also alludes the the Creation. The older children could be Adam und Eve. The sun and the moon could be: "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night ..."

3)

Out of some of the lilies comes small children, Fröbels way to show that human beeings and plants belongs together, come from the same source.