Your name, sir, is Pond
     And my name is Crow,
     Please give me some water,
     For if you do so
     I can wash and be neat,
     And the nice soup can eat,
     Though I really don’t know
     What the sparrow can mean,
     I’m quite sure, as crows go,
     I’m remarkably clean.

As the Crow must go to the Deer, the Cow, the Grass, and the Blacksmith, and each time varies the beginning of his speech, four other children could represent the Crow successively, thus bringing in a social element which would relieve any one child’s timidity.  By that time any group of children would realize the fun they could get by playing out the simple tale; and there would be petitions to be the Deer, the Cow, etc.  If the teacher sees that the characters place themselves as they should, carry out the parts naturally, and that the Crow begs with the correct rhyme, she is performing her legitimate task of suggestion and criticism that works toward developing from the first attempts of children, a good form in harmony with the story.  Here, while there is free play, the emphasis is on the speeches of rhyme, so that the reaction is largely a language expression.  The language expression is intimately related to all varieties of expression of which the child is capable, and may be made to dominate and use any of them, or be subordinated to them.

A most delightful form of creative reaction possible to the child in language expression, is the formation of original little stories similar to the “Toy Stories” written by Carolyn Bailey for the Kindergarten Review during 1915.  A story similar to “The Little Woolly Dog” might be originated by the little child about any one of his toys.  This would be related to his work with fairy tales because in such a story the child would be imitating his accumulative tales; and the adventures given the toy would be patterned after the familiar adventures of his tales.

A form of creative reaction, which will be a part of the language return given by the first-grade child from the telling of the tale, will be his reading of the tale.  When the child re-experiences the life of the story as has been described, his mental realization of it will be re-creative, and his reading the tale aloud afterwards will be just as much a form of re-creative activity as his re-telling of the tale.  The only difference is, that in one case the re-creative activity is exercised by thinking through symbols, while in the other case it is employed without the use of a book.  This concentration on the reality brings about the proper relation of reading to literature.  It frees literature from the slavery to reading which it has been made to serve, yet it makes literature contribute more effectively toward good reading than it has done in the past.