I searched the caverns up and down,
And named them one and all.
This was the world and I was king;
For me the bees came by to sing,
For me the swallows flew.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson.
Dramatic Play and Games—Serial Dramatic Play—Folk Dancing—Dramatic Parties—Pantomime and Tableaux—Dramatized Work—Home Discipline Through the Dramatic Instinct—Clubs Based on Imaginative Play—Dramatic Self-Government—Dramatics in the Church—Summary—References.
AT the outset, a clear distinction must be made between the teaching of dramatics as made use of in theatricals, whether private or public, and the cultivation of dramatic imitation or its use in the enlargement of the child’s general knowledge and experience. The main purpose of this essay is to show in what a wide range of activities this dramatic impulse expresses itself wholesomely in a child’s life. The earliest of these is through dramatic play.
Dramatic Play and Games
It is astonishing how large a proportion of play is dramatic in character. Mr. George E. Freeland watched a baby of two and a half years for a whole day and noted that he engaged in fifty-four different imaginative games. It would be pretty hard, therefore, to enumerate all the ways in which a child of three, at the period when imagination seems to awaken, utilizes this faculty in play. This is the time when the child imitates the acts of older people; therefore, whatever tiny implements or apparatus he can use for that purpose are acceptable to him.