Excerpt from Dramatic Games and Dances: For Little Children In the introduction of games as educational material, there has been, until quite recently, no serious study of the different kinds of games So fur as meaning, form of expression, and use are concerned. In all the grades above the kindergarten, most of the games have been introduced through the gymnasium, as new modes of exercise. Fortunately, the so-called dramatic game does not offer either the kind or amount of activity to make it generally attractive to the teachers who must give "so much exercise in fifteen minutes." The result has been that the games of skill have gone into the gymnasium as appropriate material, while the dramatic games have been discarded. Almost the only exception to this has been in the ease of thee folk-dances, and the unfortunate thing in their gymnastic introduction, is the tendency to take the more common and vulgar forms, because the standard of Judgment is not for the thought expressed but for the "motor activity." As long as the dance was a decadent art, it could not be expected that it would at first be given serious attention as an art-form. Education is. however, beginning to follow the trend of the creative thought of the present, and the interest in the three united arts, - the dance, music, and literature will cause them lo develop, educationally, through their proper channels and in their related forms. The earlier classifications of the dramatic games have been:-the form or manner of playing, the subject of the game, and the kinds of exercise for the body. Just to imagine studying dramatic literature under such an assortment of topics reveals the situation in which we find ourselves, educationally, in attempting to reinstate these earlier arts. Under the third heading-exercise of the body, the prize would surely go to "comic" opera because there is so much "motor activity" in that form. In attempting to present this small collection of dramatic games and dances built on another classification and for another purpose, there arc several important points to be noted before the art-forms of the little child will have much significance for us. So long as we judged the child's art-product by adult standards, we were inclined to say that the little child was "artless." Not until we hunted out the beginnings of highly evolved activities did we realize that the child is an artist at an early period of life. His constructive tendencies lead him to build in forms which differ from the most complex arts, in degree only. When we study what actions he puts together lo build his plots; how this plot is "whole anti complete" out of his experience; how yesterday's plot may not satisfy him today, because a new fact must he added to the older group, even though all the relations have to be changed to do it, we find that lie is not far away from what we call a technical study of plot making. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.