s,
one a box of tin soldiers, another a jack-in-the-box, while the girls
might dress a paper doll for a tinsel maid. The teacher, instructed by
the class, might make a castle of heavy gray cardboard, fastening it
together with heavy brass paper-fasteners and cutting out the door,
windows, and tower. It is natural for children to handle playthings;
and when a story like this is furnished the teacher should not be too
work-a-day to enter into its play-spirit. After the representation
objectively, the re-telling of the tale might be enjoyed. The child
who likes to draw might tell this story also in a number of little
sketches: _The Jack-in-the-box, The Window, The Boat, The Rat, The
Fish_, and _The Fire_. Or a very simple little dramatic dance and song
might be invented, characterized by a single mood and a single form of
motion, something like this, sung to the tune of "Here we go round the
mulberry bush, etc":--

Here we come marching, soldiers tin, soldiers tin, soldiers tin,
Here we come marching, soldiers tin,
On one leg steady we stand.
(Circle march on one leg).

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