Dramatization of Stories

As in the day-school kindergartens, little children play stories in response to a natural impulse to act out whatever they are thinking about, so in Sunday-school primary classes simple stories may sometimes be played with great pleasure and profit. In a school in Chicago the teacher had told the story of the “Lost Sheep.” Later the children played the story. They made the fold of chairs. One child was the shepherd, another child was the wandering sheep, and all the other children were the sheep who followed the shepherd safely back to the fold. When the shepherd realized that one sheep was missing, he started out to hunt for it. He looked behind great rocks (chairs) and in all dangerous places until he found the lost sheep. Certainly the child who took the part of the little lost sheep will not forget. In such a simple way the beginner in both the day-school and the Sunday-school, or in the home, may act out a story whose lesson will never be effaced from memory.

In later grades, historical and even Bible stories may be dramatized in short plays with excellent results. On special days, instead of presenting a ready-made cantata, let the children give a little play of their own composition, the result of several weeks of work upon a suitable Bible story.

Two good books of special interest on this whole subject are: “Historical Plays of Colonial Days,” by L. E. Tucker and Estelle L. Ryan; “Quaint Old Stories to Read and Act,” Marion F. Lansing.