_Teeny Tiny_, or _The Old Woman and Her Pig_, will the repetitive
passages be an aid to verbal expression. The child learns to follow
the sequence of a story and gains a sense of order. He catches the
note of definiteness from the tale, which thereby clarifies his
thinking. He gains the habit of reasoning to consequences, which is
one form of a perception of that universal law which rules the world,
and which is one of the biggest things he will ever come upon in life.
Never can he meet any critical situation where this habit of reasoning
to consequences will not be his surest guide in a decision. Thus fairy
tales, by their direct influence upon habits of thinking, effect
language training.

Fairy tales contribute to language training also by providing another
form of that basic content which is furnished for reading. In the
future the child will spend more time in the kindergarten and early
first grade in acquiring this content, so that having enjoyed the real
literature, when he reads later on he will be eager to satisfy his own
desires. Then reading will take purpose for him and be accomplished
almost without drill and practically with no effort. The reading book
will gradually disappear as a portion of his literary heritage. In the
kindergarten the child will learn the play forms, and in the first
grade the real beginnings, of phonics and of the form of words in the
applied science of spelling. In music he will learn the beginnings of
the use of the voice. This will leave him free, when he begins reading
later, to give attention to the thought reality back of the symbols.
When the elements combining to produce good oral reading are cared for
in the kindergarten and in the first grade, in the subjects of which
they properly form a part, the child, when beginning to read, no
longer will be needlessly diverted, his literature will contribute to
his reading without interference, and his growth in language will