I've been so enthralled with the pictures in this book, that I haven't gotten to actually reading it yet. It is called Inventing Kindergarten by Norman Brosterman, 1997. The photographs are by Kiyoshi Togashi.

Inventing Kindergarten is the first comprehensive book about the origin of kindergarten, a revolutionary education program for children that was created in the 1830s by charismatic German educator Friedrich Froebel. Froebel's kindergarten was the most successful system for teaching children about art, design, mathematics, and natural history ever devised. Kindergarten changed the world, and this book tells its story.