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Kindergarten Plays and Games

PATTY S. HILL

THE HE plays and games suitable to the different needs of the kindergarten children seem most easily classified under three main divisions.

1. Plays for physical activity, where the activity indicates no attempt on the part of the child to express ideas or represent dramatically. For example-skipping, running, hopping, etc.

2. Dramatic or representative play, where the activity is unquestionably the child's attempt to express ideas and images of every-day life and activities. Example-house-keeping, carpenter and

blacksmith.

3. Games with a crystallized form of expression, accompanied by certain rules and regulations. These are mainly the traditional games, such as "Ring around the Rosey," "Pussy wants a Corner," etc. The plays and games of the kindergarten are peculiarly important from the social and physical points of view.

The gifts and occupations are largely sedentary in their tendencies, and the plays and games should counteract these by emphasizing the larger fundamental muscles which make for freedom and health.

Especially is this true of the first group of plays where the chief consideration on the part of the teacher should be health; movement on the larger scale, rhythm and activity for the pure joy of it. For example-running, skipping, dancing, marching, hopping, jumping, throwing, catching, bouncing, rolling, etc.

Such activities as these get the children away from the tables, out of their chairs and on the ring; or, better still, if weather

will permit, out in the open air where greater freedom is possible.

When we realize the hygienic significance of the suggestions concerning the parts of the nervous system with their corresponding large muscles which are supposed to be developing at this period, we dare not shut our eyes to the sacred duty in guarding the child's health and bodily growth.

Moral, aesthetic and intellectual claims are imperative, but they are closely bound up with the physical care, which is so important in these early years. Dr. Thorndike says: "Care of the body is perhaps most rewarded in the case of young children."

Dramatic or representative play is one of the most natural phases of play with children at the kindergarten period. The greatest difficulty about it is that as it tends to throw the responsibility for spontaneous expression upon each individual, it increases the tendency to self-consciousness in the child and makes him feel the presence of grown people as in no other form of play.

This dramatic play is secured best in small groups where the individuality of the child has a chance to manifest itself.

If toys or materials of some kind are given with these plays, they seem to furnish an atmosphere of reality and diminish the tendency to self-consciousness. To be empty-handed often increases the self-consciousness of grown people. Notice the singer who comes out with a roll of music which is never opened, or a fan which is never used. I think a careful observation of children at dramatic play

will reveal the fact that they seldom play empty-handed. Some bit of broken china, some cast-off garment such as an old hat, or fan, or parasol, or even shavings used as curls, etc., seem to enter into the dramatic and representative plays of all children. If the little mother has doll in her arms, the housekeeper a real or make-shift broom, the washer-woman a bit of cloth or a chair turned around so the back serves as a washboard, self-consciousness takes wings and the children. really play self-forgetfully. Miss Blow

has aptly said, in the child world " it takes only a ring to make Betty a lady." We have found this touch of reality makes. the child forget self and sets free the imagination which is stimulated by it.

In the main I believe that the activities of people stimulate the child to dramatic. representation more. than animals or

nature.

The studies of the spontaneous imitations of children made by Superintendent Russell of the Worcester Normal School seem to point to the fact that from 80 to 95 per cent. were representations of human adult activities. Even the animals are rarely dramatized as compared with the impersonation of people; and as for flowers and trees, and moonbeams and sunbeams and wind, they are almost unknown as subjects for spontaneous dramatization.

When we try to get children to dramatize such subjects as these we easily force their interests into abnormal and unnatural channels of expression which make for sentimentality and artificiality. In other words, I believe that the child's interest in flowers is satisfied best in nurturing and gathering them or in painting them. While human activities are in the lead in spontaneous dramatization, the animals seem to come in second. Nevertheless, even with the animals there is a decided limitation in this direction.

Some animals the child naturally dramatizes, say the horse, and possibly the bird and butterfly-but here both the physical and aesthetic results are good. When it comes to getting down on all fours to represent the different quadrupeds the results are decidedly grotesque, with little physical freedom and no beauty. Down on all fours the activities of one quadruped can scarcely be distinguished from those of another, unless the imitation of the voice be added. Imitations of the voices of the animal world is, as every one knows, one of the most natural and spontaneous forms of imitation, especially among very young children.

I would not be dogmatic on this subject, despite the fact that I feel most strongly the poor results gained either in characteristic representation of animal life, or in physical ease, health and aesthetic results. It is questionable enough to urge this with the children, but when we insist that it is also our duty to take these most undignified, ungraceful and unaesthetic movements ourselves—personally, I rebel and draw the line.

When it comes to having children dramatize moonbeams, sunbeams, etc., it all seems unchildlike and forced. After all is not a sunbeam a kind of abstraction? What the child ordinarily sees is the sun and sunlight.

While the dramatization of some of the animals seems both natural and valuable, we should make a more careful study of those which are natural for the child to dramatize in this way, and then measure them by the standard of values physical, aesthetic and ethical.

To my mind there is a psychological distinction between gesture or illustration and impersonation or dramatization. While many phases of nature easily flow into the channels of gesture and sound, they immediately become artificial when forced into dramatization or impersona

tion. Art-that is, painting, drawing and modeling-seems a much more natural channel of expression for these nature subjects, and when we try to force their expression in dramatic play we get into all sorts of difficulties, which make the uninitiated wonder if we have lost our sense of humor.

There are many problems regarding the introduction of formulated games into the kindergarten which are most worthy of study and solution. There is little doubt that the majority of the traditional games are too mature for the kindergarten. It is so easy to impose some of these on the children before they are ready for them and so difficult to select those only which correspond to the powers developing at the kindergarten period.

Educators as a body are growing to value play more each day, and we kindergartners who have held the torch of enlightenment regarding play, when the rest of the pedagogic world sat in darkness, we, I say, are now in great danger of falling behind. While the best scientific insight into play has arisen since. Froebel's day, he has done more than any other educator to awaken the world to the significance of the role of play in the period of infancy.

It is true that some of his plays and games are open to serious criticism, yet Froebel describes, as no one else, the allaround development and wholesome results from normal play. He says: "Play gives joy, freedom, contentment, inner and outer rest and peace with the world."

Pointers for Teachers

DISCIPLINE and not accumulation of facts is to-day the ultimate aim in the teaching of geography. It is more rational to ask why a city is located where it is than to ask where it is located. It is better to connect coal fields in Illinois, iron beds of the lake regions, forests of Wisconsin, farm products of the northern Mississippi valley, commerce of the lakes, needs of the East and the development of Chicago as cause and effect than to allow these facts to remain separate and distinct as something to be remembered until examinations

are over.

A device in geography teaching that should be more generally encouraged is the use of the stereopticon. By means of lantern slides distant regions become realities in the class room, and, as is often the case, the fact that the teacher was present at the time the picture was taken adds much to the interest. Slides and lanterns can now be purchased at reasonable prices.

Laboratory work in geography, as in

other sciences, is becoming recognized as essential. Sand and clay modeling in the reproduction of regions visited during excursions, or of river valleys, mountains and extended areas as imagined by the pupil, is conducive to good results. Experiments illustrative of scientific principles governing common phenomena are being introduced and performed with vitalizing effects. -Midland Schools.

CAUSES OF FAILURE TO DISCIPLINE

I. A dirty, littered room. 2. No attention to temperature or fresh air.

3. Keeping on with one thing because you have no fresh, interesting plans to use. 4. Too much written work at one time. 5. Ignoring disorder, when you should attend to every case, meeting carelessness and inattention with persistent demand, and impertenence and rebellion with severity.School Education.

First Year Study of Browning

LOUISE WARD CLEMENT, ALBANY, N. Y.

WHEN the New York State Regents and upon the appropriateness of the verse

placed certain poems by Robert Browning among their English requirements, they probably did not intend to fling a literary gauntlet in the face of the Browning clubs. Yet their action was equivalent to that, for it is largely these clubs that have represented Browning's poems as so profound that ordinary persons cannot understand them.

The Regents have selected a dozen of the simpler poems, with one or two which are more difficult, for optional study in the first year of the high school. Previous to reading these poems, the pupil has studied carefully in the first year, one novel from a group of three, and one long poem from a corresponding group. We shall suppose him to be familiar with Scott's Ivanhoe and Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. From these works he has gained, if he is an average pupil, and welltaught, an appreciation of the romantic and the pictorial, a limited insight into character and plot, and a love for rhythm. The study of the selections from Browning should increase all of these powers and stimulate particularly the student's ability to reproduce pictures and stories.

It is easier for the average child to grasp and to reproduce a story than a word pic

ture. This is because he has heard and read stories from childhood, but his powers of observation have not been suffi

ciently cultivated to give him the ability to describe accurately. Consequently the narrative poems form the best introduction. The plot of "Herve Riel" is easily understood and reproduced. After dwelling upon the heroism of the sailor's act,

to the words, the teacher should ask the child to describe the scene. If he falters, let him note down on his pad the details which compose the picture. After he has constructed a description by arranging these details in a connected manner, the spirit will probably be lacking, but he has mastered the situation. The next day let him write a description of the council which Herve Riel interrupts, supposing himself to have been one of the sailors in the surrounding'group. The idea appeals to the child, and, crude as the result may be, it is apt to have the spirit of the situation, with some truth of detail.

"The Incident of a French Camp," and "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," may be taken up in a similar fashion. Nothing can illustrate the former poem better than a picture of Napoleon, standing in his typical attitude, arms folded and eyes gazing steadily ahead. If the pupil adds in imagination. the wounded boy on his galloping horse, he has both story and picture. He will enjoy telling the story of the latter poem from the standpoint of the gallant horse who galloped to save Aix. The boy observes the heroism in these poems at once; the girl frequently enjoys the more quiet poems better.

"Pheidippides" needs some explanation unless the student knows Greek history. This poem appeals to his love of the patriotic, the historic, and the athletic. When the boy has calculated the distance between Athens and Sparta, and Marathon and Athens, his esteem for the run

ner, and indeed for the chronicler, is increased.

"Cavalier Times" are of value chiefly. for the beat of drum and tramp of feet which echo through the lines. "Boot, Saddle, to Horse, and Away," is the best one to learn, being the freest from rough. language.

"The Boy and the Angel" is hard to understand until the pupil realizes that it is a fable. When this is clear to him, he finds many modern parallels to the story of the boy who desired to become Pope that he might praise God better, and who, after reaching that height, placed his own pleasure before God's. In this poem, as in many of Browning's, the narrative and the moral are combined in a series of pictures. The child should be led to enlarge upon these, which are merely suggested by the poet. He should see Theocrite flinging back his curls from. his flushed little face as he works and sings. He may imagine the details of Theocrite's craft, the shop, and the view from the window. With this humble scene the pupil may contrast St. Peter's at Rome with Theocrite still as the central figure. Since St. Peter's is outside of the pupil's experience, it is profitable to show him photographs of the cathedral and the Vatican, and to read him a brief description to direct his imagination in the right way. Many of the absurd errors which children make in composition come from the lack of adequate directions before they begin.

If the student gains from "Evelyn Hope" the picture of the dead girl lying in a room through whose closed shutters a single ray of sunshine creeps to light up her bright hair and the sprig of geranium at her bedside, he has done well. If he gains in addition the realization that love lasts beyond death, he has taken an important step in the appreciation of Browning's characteristic ideas.

There are poems which leave in the memory the fragrance of budding fruit trees and the gleam of yellow flowers in the sunlight; "Home Thoughts from Abroad" is such a poem, and to commit it to memory is to have access to neverfailing May. One can never see a fruit tree in blossom or a meadow dotted with buttercups without thinking of these lines. They are like Pippa's song, which a child of twelve years quoted at the end of her description of spring, stating that Browning must have had just such a scene in mind when he wrote them. Although Pippa's song is not included in the first year requirements, it is so brief and delightful that the pupil can learn it by a few readings.

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his heaven-

All's right with the world.

"Home Thoughts from the Sea," the companion piece to "Home Thoughts from Abroad," is shorter but none the less suggestive. suggestive. When the student has found. Gibraltar, Cape St. Vincent and Cadiz on the map, and can reproduce orally the scene which Browning describes, let him write a letter from on board an ocean liner which is entering the Mediterranean just at sunset. By way of correcting any similar misconceptions on his own part, it is well to tell him of the club woman. who always supposed, until she saw Gibraltar, that the Prudential sign was really there.

After the narrative and descriptive poems just mentioned have been studied carefully, two of the assigned works remain," The Lost Leader," and "One Word More." The poems previously studied, with the exception of "The Boy

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