Call loudly:
Mary! Lucy! Ethel!
Later call again:
Blonde! Beautiful! Good!
Call:
Peter! bring a chair.
George! bring a cube.
Louis! get a frame.
Charles! Charles! quick! bring me the ... bring it to me, quick, quick.
Call slowly this way:
Come! Come! give me a kiss—please, come!
Then say:
Mary! come! give me a kiss!
These commands lend themselves to a little dramatic scene. It is really a sort of play, which the children recite.
The tendency to recitation and to imitation is very strong and often well developed at the age of five years. Little children experience a singular fascination in pronouncing the words with sentiment and in accompanying them with gestures. One can hardly imagine the simplicity of the little dramatic acts which interest the five year old child. Nothing but actual experiment could possibly have revealed it to us. One day, in fact, our little children were invited to be present at a dramatic entertainment given by the older children of the Public Schools. They followed it with really surprising interest. However, they remembered only three words of the play they had heard; but with these three words they made up a little dramatic action of their own, which they repeated over and over again the following day.
The commands of these "call" cards are, accordingly, real plays for our little ones. The child calls, pronouncing the name with a sort of sustained drawl; the child who is called comes forward; then the same thing is done with the other names, and each child obeys as he is called. Then the incomplete calls begin: blonde! blonde! beautiful! And no one moves! This makes a great impression on the children. Imperative commands, like requests, lend themselves to active dramatic action. Peter has been called and has brought his chair; George has brought the cube; Louis has taken out a frame; but Charles sits there intent, expectant, while the child calls out,—But bring it to me, bring it to me quickly! And how expressive we found the vain request,—Come, come! please give me a kiss,—come, come! At last the cry,—Mary! come! brings the resulting action and Mary runs to give the kiss which has been so long invoked!
These little "plays" require a real study of the parts, and the children rehearse their different rôles over and over again.