iled our
lamentation, but ye have not joined our mourning procession."

Since the very name Kindergarten is to imply a teaching which fulfils
the child's own wants and desires, it must supply abundant provision for
the dramatic representation of life. Adults have always been ready to
use for their own purposes the strong tendency to imitate, which is a
characteristic of all normal children, but few even now realise to what
extent a child profits by his imitative play. The explanation that
Froebel found for this will now be generally accepted, viz. that only by
acting it out can a child fully grasp an idea, "For what he tries to
represent or do, he begins to understand." He thinks in action, or as
one writer put it, he "apperceives with his muscles." This explanation
seems to cover imitative play, from the little child's imitative wave of
the hand up to such elaborate imitations as are described in Stanley
Hall's _Story of a Sand Pile,_[18] or in Dewey's _Schools of
To-morrow._ But when we think of the joy of such imaginative play as
that of Red Indians, shipwrecks and desert islands, we feel that these
show a craving for experience, for life, such a craving as causes the
adult to lose himself in a book of travels or in a dramatic performance,
and which explains the phenomenal success of the cinema, poor stuff as
it is.

[Footnote 18: Or that delightful "Play Town" in _The Play Way_.]

We thirst for experiences, even for those which are unpleasant; we
wonder "how it feels" to be up in an aeroplane or down in a submarine.
We are far indeed from desiring air-raids, but if such things must be,
there is a curious satisfaction in being "in it." And though the
experiences they desire may be matters of everyday occurrence to us,
children probably feel the craving even more keenly. "You may write what
you like," said a teacher, and a somewhat inarticulate child wrote, "I
was out last night, it was late." "Why, Jack," said another, "you've
painted your cow green; did you ever see a green cow?" "No," said Jack,
"but I'd like to."

In early Kindergarten days this imitative and dramatic tendency was
chiefly met in games, and the children were by turns butterflies and
bees, bakers and carpenters, clocks and windmills. The programme was
suggested by Froebel's _Mother Songs_, in which he deals with the
child's nearest environment. Too often, indeed, the realities to which
Froebel referred were not realities to English children, but