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.
VI
USE OF THE ETHICAL INDEX
Frequently a parent in the home, a teacher in the schoolroom, a minister, or other child-helper, in dealing with children, wishes to find a suitable story, at a moment’s notice, that may aptly and forcibly illustrate some ethical principle that he may wish to inculcate. Often a story, well selected and aptly told, will hold up “the mirror to nature” and, indirectly, by the law of suggestion, impress the mind and heart of the child far more successfully than a precept, command, or obtrusive moral. The Ethical Index, which will be found at the end of this book, on page 291, is for this purpose. By a moment’s reflection upon the moral principle desired to be impressed or suggested, a story illustrating it may be found. Of course, in many stories more than one ethical principle may be found, but no more than one, and that the strongest and most evident lesson, should be emphasized in one story. In this ethical use of a story great care must be taken not to overemphasize the moral lesson embedded in it, for that will be to lose it. In the use of this index the story-teller may well remember the prayer of Henry Van Dyke, “May I never tag a moral to a tale or tell a story without a meaning.”