In free play the child represents the characters and acts out the story. His desire to play will lead to a keenness of attention to the story-telling, which is the best aid to re-experiencing, and the play will react upon his mind and give greater power to visualize. Nothing is better for the child than the freedom and initiative used in dramatization, and nothing gives more self-reliance and poise than to act, to do something.--We must remember that in the history of the child's literature it was education that freed his spirit from the deadening weight of didacticism in the days of the _New England Primer_. And we must now have a care that education never may become guilty of crushing the spirit of his freedom, spontaneity, and imagination, by a dead formalism in its teaching method.--The play develops the voice, and it gives freedom and grace to bodily movements. It fixes in the child mind the details of the story and impresses effectively many a good piece of literature; it combines intellectual, emotional, artistic, and physical action. The simplest kindergarten plays, such as _The Farmer, The Blacksmith_, and _Little Travelers_, naturally lead into playing a story such as _The Sheep and the Pig_ or _The Gingerbread Man_. _The Mouse that Lost Her Tail_ and _The Old Woman and Her Pig_ are delightful simple plays given in _Chain Stories and Playlets_ by Mara Chadwick and E. Gray Freeman, suited to the kindergarten to play or the first grade to read and play. Working out a complete dramatization of a folk-tale such as _Sleeping Beauty_, in the first grade, and having the children come into the kindergarten and there play it for them, will be a great incentive toward catching the spirit of imaginatively entering into a situation which you are not. This is the essential for dramatization. _Johnny Cake_ is a good tale to be played in the kindergarten because it uses a great number of children. As the kindergarten room generally is large, it enables the children who represent the man, the woman, the little boy, etc., to station themselves at some distance. There are some dangers in dramatization which are to be avoided:--