These exercises, not needing the teacher’s immediate direction, can take the place of the many forms of meaningless “busy work” that a misdirected ingenuity has devised for the purpose of keeping children “still.”
DRAMATIZATION.
Another form to which the stories lend themselves readily is dramatization. Children take intense delight in throwing striking situations into dramatic form. This exercise also should be undirected. If the story has not become crystallized into set phrases, this form of reproduction becomes a genuine language exercise.
CONSTRUCTION.
In the foregoing we have examples of artistic creation. There is a spontaneous impulse toward embodying in a suitable form the child’s own imagery. This activity goes on for its own sake; it gives pleasure.
In construction proper, where direction is given and objects are made from dictation to serve a useful purpose, we have activity passing over into what is called work. This side should not be neglected. Children are to live in a real world, where the purpose of activity is not always in the activity itself but may lie in something external to it. Things have to be made for certain definite purposes and because of certain needs. These control the activity.
While it may be admitted that the stories do not form the ideal connection for uniting such activity with the whole, yet, under present conditions, they offer the only means practicable. Children will take a deeper interest in making Red Riding Hood’s basket than in making one that has not this ideal environment.
Attention is called to that excellent little manual, “Construction Work,” by Worst, where measurements and directions can be found for the construction of most of the familiar articles of the household.
SIXTEEN STORIES
AND
HOW TO USE THEM.