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.—­The play develops the voice, and it gives freedom and grace to bodily movements.  It fixes in the child mind the details of the story and impresses effectively many a good piece of literature; it combines intellectual, emotional, artistic, and physical action.  The simplest kindergarten plays, such as The Farmer, The Blacksmith, and Little Travelers, naturally lead into playing a story such as The Sheep and the Pig or The Gingerbread Man. The Mouse that Lost Her Tail and The Old Woman and Her Pig are delightful simple plays given in Chain Stories and Playlets by Mara Chadwick and E. Gray Freeman, suited to the kindergarten to play or the first grade to read and play.  Working out a complete dramatization of a folk-tale such as Sleeping Beauty, in the first grade, and having the children come into the kindergarten and there play it for them, will be a great incentive toward catching the spirit of imaginatively entering into a situation which you are not.  This is the essential for dramatization. Johnny Cake is a good tale to be played in the kindergarten because it uses a great number of children.  As the kindergarten room generally is large, it enables the children who represent the man, the woman, the little boy, etc., to station themselves at some distance.

There are some dangers in dramatization which are to be avoided:—­

(1) Dramatization often is in very poor form.  The result is not the important thing, but the process.  And sometimes teachers have understood this to mean, “Hands off!” and left the children to their crude impulses, unaided and unimproved.  When the child shows what he is trying to do the teacher may show him how he can do what he wants to do.  By suggestion and criticism she may get him to improve his first effort, provided she permits him to be absolutely free when he acts.—­The place of this absolute freedom in the child’s growth has been emblazoned to the kindergarten by the Montessori System.—­Also by participating in the play as one of the characters, the teacher may help to a better form.  Literature will be less distorted by dramatization when teachers are better trained to see the possibilities of the material, when through training they appreciate the tale as one of the higher forms of literature, and respect it accordingly.  Also it will be less distorted by dramatization when the tales selected for use are those containing the little child’s interests, when he will have something to express which he really knows about.  Moreover, as children gain greater