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A STUDY OF FAIRY TALES

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.

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,