The setting in this story is a table in a sitting-room and the
playthings on the table. The characters are two playthings. After the
first telling of this story the child naturally would like to
represent it. The story has made his playthings come alive and so he
would like to make them appear also. This is a tale in which
representation, after the first telling, will give to the child much
pleasure and will give him a chance to do something with it
cooperatively. He can reproduce the setting of this tale upon a table
in a schoolroom. Each child could decide what is needed to represent
the story and offer what he can. One child could make the yard outside
the castle of green blotting-paper. Another child could furnish a
mirror for the lake, another two toy green trees, one two wax swans,
one a box of tin soldiers, another a jack-in-the-box, while the girls
might dress a paper doll for a tinsel maid. The teacher, instructed by
the class, might make a castle of heavy gray cardboard, fastening it
together with heavy brass paper-fasteners and cutting out the door,
windows, and tower. It is natural for children to handle playthings;
and when a story like this is furnished the teacher should not be too
work-a-day to enter into its play-spirit. After the representation
objectively, the re-telling of the tale might be enjoyed. The child
who likes to draw might tell this story also in a number of little
sketches: _The Jack-in-the-box, The Window, The Boat, The Rat, The
Fish_, and _The Fire_. Or a very simple little dramatic dance and song
might be invented, characterized by a single mood and a single form of
motion, something like this, sung to the tune of "Here we go round the
mulberry bush, etc":--
Here we come marching, soldiers tin, soldiers tin, soldiers tin,
Here we come marching, soldiers tin,
On one leg steady we stand.
(Circle march on one leg).
This could easily be concluded with a game if the child who first was
compelled to march on two legs had to pay some penalty, stand in the
center of the ring, or march at the end of the line.
(h) Creative reaction as a result of listening to the telling of fairy
tales, appears in its most varied form of artistic expression in _free
play and dramatization_. It is here that the child finds a need for
the expression of all his skill in song and dance, construction,
language, and art, for here he finds a use for these things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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