How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell Part 9

In different rooms, I was told _The Half Chick_, _The Little Red Hen_, _The Three Bears_, _The Red-Headed Woodp.e.c.k.e.r_, _The Fox and the Grapes_, and many other simple stories, and in every instance there was a noticeable degree of spontaneity and command of expression.

When the reading cla.s.ses were held, the influence of this work was very visible. It had crept into the teachers' method, as well as the children's att.i.tude. The story interest was still paramount. In the discussion, in the teachers' remarks, and in the actual reading, there was a joyousness and an interest in the subject-matter which totally precluded that preoccupation with sounds and syllables so deadly to any real progress in reading. There was less of the mechanical in the reading than in any I had heard in my visits to schools; but it was exceptionally accurate.

The second form of giving back which has proved a keen pleasure and a stimulus to growth is a kind of "seat-work." The children are allowed to make original ill.u.s.trations of the stories by cutting silhouette pictures.

It will be readily seen that no child can do this without visualising each image very perfectly. In the simplest and most unconscious way possible, the small artists are developing the power of conceiving and holding the concrete image of an idea given, the power which is at the bottom of all arts of expression.

Through the kindness of Miss Sweeney, I am able to insert several of these ill.u.s.trations. They are entirely original, and were made without any thought of such a use as this.

The pictures and the retelling are both popular with children, but neither is as dear to them as the third form of reproduction of which I wish to speak. This third kind is taken entirely on the ground of play, and no visibly didactic element enters into it. It consists simply of _playing the story_.

When a good story with a simple sequence has been told, and while the children are still athrill with the delight of it, they are told they may play it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FOX AND THE GRAPES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN WHO LIVED IN A SHOE"]

"Who would like to be Red Riding Hood?" says the teacher; up go the little girls' hands, and Mary or Hannah or Gertrude is chosen.

"Who will be the wolf?" Johnny or Marcus becomes the wolf. The kind woodchopper and the mother are also happily distributed, for in these little dramatic companies it is an all-star cast, and no one realises any indignity in a subordinate _role_.

"Now, where shall we have little Red Riding Hood's house? 'Over in that corner,' Katie? Very well, Riding Hood shall live over there. And where shall the grandmother's cottage be?"

The children decide that it must be a long distance through the wood,--half-way round the schoolroom, in fact. The wolf selects the spot where he will meet Red Riding Hood, and the woodchopper chooses a position from which he can rush in at the critical moment, to save Red Riding Hood's life.

Then, with gusto good to see, they play the game. The teacher makes no suggestions; each actor creates his part. Some children prove extremely expressive and facile, while others are limited by nature. But each is left to his spontaneous action.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats ...

followed the Piper for their lives."]

In the course of several days several sets of children have been allowed to try; then if any of them are notably good in the several _roles_, they are given an especial privilege in that story, as was done with the retelling. When a child expresses a part badly, the teacher sometimes asks if anyone thinks of another way to do it; from different examples offered, the children then choose the one they prefer; this is adopted. At no point is the teacher apparently teaching. She lets the audience teach itself and its actors.

The children played a good many stories for me during my visit in Providence. Of them all, _Red Riding Hood_, _The Fox and the Grapes_, and _The Lion and the Mouse_ were most vividly done.

It will be long before the chief of the Little Red Riding Hoods fades from my memory. She had a dark, foreign little face, with a good deal of darker hair tied back from it, and brown, expressive hands. Her eyes were so full of dancing lights that when they met mine unexpectedly it was as if a chance reflection had dazzled me. When she was told that she might play, she came up for her riding hood like an embodied delight, almost dancing as she moved. (Her teacher used a few simple elements of stage-setting for her stories, such as bowls for the Bears, a cape for Riding Hood, and so on.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Piper piped and the children danced, ... all but one little lame boy, who could not keep up with the rest."]

The game began at once. Riding Hood started from the rear corner of the room, basket on arm; her mother gave her strict injunctions as to lingering on the way, and she returned a respectful "Yes, mother." Then she trotted round the aisle, greeting the woodchopper on the way, to the deep wood which lay close by the teacher's desk. There master wolf was waiting, and there the two held converse,--master wolf very crafty indeed, Red Riding Hood extremely polite. The wolf then darted on ahead and crouched down in the corner which represented grandmother's bed. Riding Hood tripped sedately to the imaginary door, and knocked. The familiar dialogue followed, and with the words "the better to eat you with, my dear!" the wolf clutched Red Riding Hood, to eat her up. But we were not forced to undergo the threatened scene of horrid carnage, as the woodchopper opportunely arrived, and stated calmly, "I will not let you kill Little Red Riding Hood."

All was now happily culminated, and with the chopper's grave injunction as to future conduct in her ears, the rescued heroine tiptoed out of the woods, to her seat.

I wanted to applaud, but I realised in the nick of time that we were all playing, and held my peace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIAWATHA PICTURES]

_The Fox and the Grapes_ was more dramatically done, but was given by a single child. He was the chosen "fox" of another primary room, and had the fair colouring and st.u.r.dy frame which matched his Swedish name. He was naturally dramatic. It was easy to see that he instinctively visualised everything, and this he did so strongly that he suggested to the onlooker every detail of the scene.

He chose for his grape-trellis the rear wall of the room.

Standing there, he looked longingly up at the invisible bunch of grapes.

"My gracious," he said, "what fine grapes! I will have some."

Then he jumped for them.

"Didn't get them," he muttered, "I'll try again," and he jumped higher.

"Didn't get them this time," he said disgustedly, and hopped up once more.

Then he stood still, looked up, shrugged his shoulders, and remarked in an absurdly worldly-wise tone, "Those grapes are sour!" After which he walked away.

Of course the whole thing was infantile, and without a touch of grace; but it is no exaggeration to say that the child did what many grown-up actors fail to do,--he preserved the illusion.

It was in still another room that I saw the lion and mouse fable played.

The lion lay flat on the floor for his nap, but started up when he found his paw laid on the little mouse, who crouched as small as she could beside him. (The mouse was by nature rather larger than the lion, but she called what art she might to her a.s.sistance.) The mouse persuaded the lion to lift his paw, and ran away.

Presently a most horrific groaning emanated from the lion. The mouse ran up, looked him over, and soliloquised in precise language,--evidently remembered, "What is the matter with the lion? Oh, I see; he is caught in a trap." And then she gnawed with her teeth at the imaginary rope which bound him.

"What makes you so kind to me, little Mouse?" said the rescued lion.

"You let me go, when I asked you," said the mouse demurely.

"Thank you, little Mouse," answered the lion; and therewith, finis.

It is not impossible that all this play atmosphere may seem incongruous and unnecessary to teachers used to more conventional methods, but I feel sure that an actual experience of it would modify that point of view conclusively. The children of the schools where story-telling and "dramatising" were practised were startlingly better in reading, in attentiveness, and in general power of expression, than the pupils of like social conditions in the same grades of other cities which I visited soon after, and in which the more conventional methods were exclusively used.

The teachers, also, were stronger in power of expression.

But the most noticeable, though the least tangible, difference was in the moral atmosphere of the schoolroom. There had been a great gain in vitality in all the rooms where stories were a part of the work. It had acted and reacted on pupils and teachers alike. The telling of a story well so depends on being thoroughly vitalised that, naturally, habitual telling had resulted in habitual vitalisation.

This result was not, of course, wholly due to the practice of story-telling, but it was in some measure due to that. And it was a result worth the effort.

I beg to urge these specific uses of stories, as both recreative and developing, and as especially tending toward enlarged power of expression: retelling the story; ill.u.s.trating the story in seat-work; dramatisation.

STORIES SELECTED AND ADAPTED FOR TELLING

ESPECIALLY FOR KINDERGARTEN AND CLa.s.s I.

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town, Upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown, Rapping at the window, crying through the lock, "Are the children in their beds, for now it's eight o'clock?"

There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile, He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile; He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a little crooked house.