The home may develop the dramatic instinct by encouraging dramatic
play and games. Some of the most inexpensive and accessible homemade
playthings are the most valuable for dramatic purposes.
Through serial and cooperative dramatic play, the parent enters into
and retains the pleasantest kind of fellowship with his children.
There is excellent opportunity to employ this kind of play in
story-telling and at the family festivals.
Folk-dancing is a form of dramatic play which, historically, has
been of great importance and is to-day most valuable in stimulating
artistic capacity and making the child bodily and spiritually graceful
and harmonious.
Parents will find their best resource for children’s parties in
inviting all those present to exercise the dramatic instinct.
Through such dramatics, the home, the school and the social center
have excellent opportunities to bring themselves close to the
children. Beginning with pantomime and continuing with originative
story-playing, the child, by and by, in adolescence, comes to the
period when he is ready to perform memorized plays. By doing so he
gains a new form of expression and becomes capable of recognizing what
is really fine in the drama.
The parent should crave, and the social worker plan, so that every
child will have the opportunity during the “gang” period of belonging
to some social club whose scheme is based upon imaginative play. In
such organizations, young people live out together actual revivals of
pioneer activities and virtues and of the days and deeds of chivalry.
A similar opportunity is possible in the schools, through dramatic
self-government.
The parent ought to be interested in the tendency that is manifest
in the church to recognize and revive the sacred drama. Both through
liturgy and the church festivals it is possible to make the strongest
spiritual impression upon children.