FINGER STORIES
Froebel was the first educator to discover the educational value of simple, instructive mother-plays. His “Mother Play Book” is one of the greatest books in the whole history of education. In it Froebel pictures home as it ought to be, and accompanies the mother in her daily round through the house, garden, field, worship, market, and church. Here is one of his charming set of finger games for the mother to teach her child while he is yet in her arms:
In such a song, the dawning consciousness of the child is turned to the family relations, and is surely an improvement on the old nursery method of playing “This little pig went to market.”
There are also little story finger-plays in which gestures may be employed as in the finger-play rhymes. A collection of these finger stories, the first play stories for infants, is given in “Descriptive Stories for All the Year,” by M. Burnham; and in “Finger Plays,” by Emilie Poulsson.
PLAYING THE STORIES
In early childhood, as soon as a story takes possession of the child, he shows a tendency to enter into its persons and its action; to mimic the voices, to ape the manners, to imitate the acts. This is the instinct of imitation and play. The child should be allowed to play out the story in this way, or better still, the parent or teacher may propose playing the story. Not every story may be played equally well, but the following familiar child’s stories may be used in play and heartily enjoyed without staging or any stage terms—just natural, spontaneous, hearty play: “Little Red Ridinghood,” “The Fox and the Grapes,” “The Lion and the Mouse,” “The Hare and the Tortoise,” “Dick Whittington and His Cat,” “Androcles and the Lion,” and others in this book.
“The Fox and the Grapes” (page 67) may be played by a single child. A wall is selected for holding the imaginary bunches of grapes. The child stands or crouches, looking up longingly at them, then jumps up for them, and, finally, after a fall, walks or crawls away, saying, “I know those grapes are sour and not worth eating.”
“The Lion and the Mouse” (page 74) may be played by two children. One child, choosing to be a lion, lies flat on the floor taking a nap. The child acting as a mouse crawls over him, awakening the lion, who roars and pins the mouse to the earth with his paw. “Let me go! I’ll help you some time,” cries the mouse, and, being freed, runs away. Later the lion is in an imaginary net, the meshes of which the mouse gnaws, and then runs away, saying, “I did help you after all, you see.”
In a similar way many of the stories of this book may be reproduced in play by two or more children to their great enjoyment and instruction.
DRAMATIZATION OF STORIES
As in the day-school kindergartens, little children play stories in response to a natural impulse to act out whatever they are thinking about, so in Sunday-school primary classes simple stories may sometimes be played with great pleasure and profit. In a school in Chicago the teacher had told the story of the “Lost Sheep.” Later the children played the story. They made the fold of chairs. One child was the shepherd, another child was the wandering sheep, and all the other children were the sheep who followed the shepherd safely back to the fold. When the shepherd realized that one sheep was missing, he started out to hunt for it. He looked behind great rocks (chairs) and in all dangerous places until he found the lost sheep. Certainly the child who took the part of the little lost sheep will not forget. In such a simple way the beginner in both the day-school and the Sunday-school, or in the home, may act out a story whose lesson will never be effaced from memory.
In later grades, historical and even Bible stories may be dramatized in short plays with excellent results. On special days, instead of presenting a ready-made cantata, let the children give a little play of their own composition, the result of several weeks of work upon a suitable Bible story.
Two good books of special interest on this whole subject are: “Historical Plays of Colonial Days,” by L. E. Tucker and Estelle L. Ryan; “Quaint Old Stories to Read and Act,” Marion F. Lansing.