PART II

A

Creative Drama

SHOWER OF IRIDESCENT BUBBLES floated out over the circle of alert kindergaten children, sitting on the big rug with hands hopefully outstretched.

"Whoever is touched by a bubble is magic!" Mrs. Bellmar had said, and who wouldn't sit quietly and wait for a soap-bubble to light on his hand or his head for the fun of being made magic? Particularly, as Mrs. Bellmar had told them that as soon as they felt the magic touch on head or hands, they would be able to float without a sound like the lovely, silent bubbles.

Experience had taught them that if they snatched at a bubble it would burst. So they waited, still as anything, until, one after another, they were touched by the glowing bubbles and given the magic power to float soundlessly (well, almost soundlessly) over the floor to the sound of delicate music.

Perhaps, it was because this had been an unusually noisy group, with a tendency to push and slap, that the teacher had planned this as an experience with touch rather than sight. The children did exclaim over the exquisite rainbow colors of the bubbles in the sunlight; but mostly it was the lightness and gentleness that were stressed.

One little girl who had tried rather roughly to pat the teacher's face with the hand of a large doll, said after the bubble experience, "May Hildegarde pat your cheek the way the bubble touched you?” And, as the group started off that day, they "floated" downstairs like bubbles! 1

That sensitive awareness to environment is the beginning of aesthetic appreciation was the belief of John Dewey.2 Parents cannot begin too early to cultivate in their children appreciation of sights and sounds, tastes, smells, and things touched. There are plenty of

As told by Marcella Bellmar, Barbereux School, Evanston, Ill.

Dewey, John, Art As Experience. New York. Minton Balch & Co., 1934,

551934 0-60-4

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opportunities at home, riding in the country, walking in the woods, or on the beach. It is surprising how much one will grow in awareness of beauty in colors and color combinations, in discrimination in tastes and smells and sounds if one searches with children for stones and shells that are interesting in shape and color, imagines pictures in clouds, sees unusual tree shapes, or colors in the sky. All of these experiences develop an awareness that furthers the child's appreciation of every art in the years ahead.

The game of seeing and imagining is important to children, and will link the entire family or classroom in the enjoyment of living and playing together. Most people remember with warmth and affection those times when their parents wove into the pattern of practical realities of life the bright threads of fantasy and fun.

Developing Sense Awareness in
Young Children

A director of a nursery school went about developing a sense of awareness in the little children she taught by using contrasts.3 She thought with them about things that are "loud" and things that are "quiet"; then, after a few weeks, things that are "smooth" and things that are "wrinkled." She did not use more than a dozen contrasts during the year, but they included all the senses.

The children thought about many things: "Quiet as a spider makes his web," "loud as a horse galloping over a wooden bridge,” “wrinkled as a prune,” “flat as a word on a piece of paper," "slow as seeds come up, pushing the earth."

Sometime during the first year or two of school, most children are taken to a farm, a fire department, or a post office. When children relive the next day such an experience as visiting a farm, holding the baby turkeys, feeding the chickens and the pigs, sliding down the hay, they prolong their enjoyment of the visit, and begin to form the habit of recalling sense impressions.

After the visit to the fire department, they like to play going to a fire with fire-truck and hook and ladder. They drive the truck to the scene of the fire, shout orders, play the hose on the building, rescue the survivors.

Awareness and the Seasons. "What signs of fall have you seen?“ asked of a group of kindergarten or primary children, calls forth a lively description of autumn leaves, nuts, squirrels, bonfires. The children rake imaginary leaves into a pile or a wire basket (depending

3 Dixon, Madeleine, The Power of Dance. New York, John Day & Co. 1939. p. 25.

on their experience), light the fire, smell the pungent odor. "Oh, my!” the teacher says, "we're all turning into red and yellow flames!" And, sure enough, all twist and turn and leap high into the air. What a wonderful bonfire!

Each season is full of its own distinctive appeals to the senses: the miracle of spring with all nature coming alive; the sunshine and rain and color of summer; the beauty of snow in winter; and those rare days when frost transforms the world into an exquisite fairyland.

A Sound Effects Orchestra.-Children find it absorbing to develop a kind of "sound effects" orchestra made up of all sorts of homely "instruments" which suggest sounds in a forest. The chorus of katydids, tree-frogs, birds, squirrels, wind, and leaves, each in its characteristic rhythm, comes through with sometimes startling realism from grooved handles of seam-markers over which a pencil is rubbed, pieces of coarse sandpaper rubbed together, combs, brushes, small meatpounders, and dozens of other household utensils.

"See what I discovered!" exclaims Sally, proudly holding up the metal tube from the inside of a coffee percolator, and tapping it with a pencil. "It sounds like a fairy bell!"

"Listen to this!" sang out Bobby as he proceeded to stroke the plastic bristles of two hair-brushes together. "It's crickets!"

Two groups of first or second graders working together can create a little play set in this live forest, or dramatize a poem or story such as Walter de la Mare's Someone, William Allingham's The Elf Singing, Rose Fyleman's Fairies, Florence Jaque's A Goblinade, or The Sleeping Beauty. What atmosphere for mystery and fun!

All these activities give children experiences not only in sense awareness but also in creative rhythmic movement and dramatic play. Meanwhile, in kindergarten, at least, they will be having basic rhythms accompanied by the piano, percussion instruments, and perhaps by records. Too often their experiences in all three of these important types of activities end in the primary grades, or fail henceforth to receive the emphasis which is essential in art education.

The Significance of Play

Appreciation of the full significance of play in the life of a child has required a long, long time to become general, if indeed it can be said to be general at the present time.

"Play goes beyond the confines of purely physical or purely biological activity. It is a significant function—that is to say, there is some sense to it. All play means something."

4

Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens. Boston, Beacon Press. 1950. p. 1.

In nursery and kindergarten, dramatic play is of very great value in providing children with opportunities for discovering and expressing themselves. When a child plays at being father and mother, the wild animal and the hunter, the teacher and the pupils, he is not only learning to understand the behavior of things and people but he is "externalizing his inner drama—the various aspects of his inner personality-in just the way in which the creative artist in literature or painting does."

5

"Play is a prelude to art," writes Brownell." "All enjoyable activities may move on and merge into art. They lose their random willfulness as they mature and establish forms and inner disciplines."

This is what happens in the child's dramatic play. At first it is his spontaneous playing out of ideas and experiences—his rehearsal of things known and his exploration of things unknown. He has engaged in this imaginary play all his short life, with no idea of the pattern or plot which characterizes real drama. His drama has no definite beginning, middle, and end; no preconceived culmination or consequence. It can begin anywhere, and end without any climax. When a child goes to school, his dramatic play centers around the fascinating equipment of the room-the housekeeping corner with its dolls and stoves and beds and dishes; the block corner from which boats and trains and many other exciting things can be made to play on; the trucks and wagons and automobiles.

All this is a far cry from art. Yet it has in it the beginnings which can lead toward art. In the social adjustments which go on all the time under cover of dramatic play, the child is finding out much about himself and how he fits into the group. He is learning how to keep that precarious balance between his own desires and acceptance by the others, for this kind of play is so much fun that he cannot bear to be excluded. And he is using his imagination to create with the other children a dramatic situation which could go on all morning if it were not interrupted.

It is the teacher's part to keep wide open the avenues between play and art, whether it leads toward creative writing, the graphic arts, music, the dance, or drama. As soon as children are ready for the next step in any of the arts, the teacher provides the opportunity and motivation. In the drama, it may well be a guided experience in creating a play with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Mother Goose as a Treasure House. Nothing is quite so good for a beginning story dramatization as Mother Goose, which Cornelia

Hartley, Ruth E., Frank, Lawrence K., Goldenson, Robert M., Understanding Children's Play. New York, Columbia University Press. 1952. p. 17.

6 Brownell, Baker, Art Is Action. New York, Harper and Bros.

1939.

P. 34.

1

Meigs characterizes as "one of the indestructible treasures of the human race." Quaint and charming, the verses are loved by most children for their perfect rhythm, their type of humor, their delightful variety of character and incident. It matters not a whit that many of them are full of meaning, of political satire, of symbols. Children love hearing about the familiar characters doing the most unexpected and nonsensical things.

One of the first rhymes which the children like to play is Little Miss Muffet. Every child understands it, for the experience Miss Muffet has is universal. What child has not enjoyed picnicking, and what child has not been frightened by a spider or a bee?

On a day when the children are out-of-doors, perhaps, preferably in a grassy spot, the teacher may comment on what a wonderful day it would be for a picnic.

"Why not have one right now? If you will look around and find a magic bowl, I will fill it with whatever you would like to eat from this big magic bowl I have. Nancy, what would you like me to put in your bowl?”

"I'd like some ABC cereal," replied Nancy, falling in at once with what she recognized as delightful make-believe.

"I'd like some peaches and cream!" "I'd like a chocolate sundae." And all the other children had some preference.

While both teacher and children are enjoying a make-believe lunch, perhaps the teacher can say, "Do you remember a story about a little girl whose mother gave her a bowl of her favorite food to eat out-ofdoors? She chose curds and whey; and just when she was enjoying it..."

"A big black spider came and sat down beside her!" may burst forth from several children. "That's 'Little Miss Muffet'."

Then, of course, the children all want to repeat the rhyme and eat. curds and whey like Miss Muffet. As the teacher begins to eat with the children, perhaps she can say, "Isn't it lovely here in the garden? Aren't you glad that mother says we may sit out here on this grassy tuffet and look at the pretty pink petunias and watch the big monarch butterflies?"

"And hear the crickets," chimes in Billy, who can always be counted on to lead in any dramatic play.

Inspired by Billy, the children comment on all kinds of things they see in the yard. And it will be surprising if some child does not scream, "A spider!" drop his bowl and run for the "house." This

7 Meigs, Cornelia, Nesbitt, Elizabeth, Eaton, Anne, and Viguers, Ruth Hill, A Critical History of Children's Literature. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1953. p. 70.