The Doll's Storybook

Stories about dolls who live in our world. Although these stories are suitable for children, they should check with their parents before reading and always be careful online. Readers are invited to donate to a charity supporting pediatric cancer treatment and research. Images shown are taken by the author or from a free image website with attribution and appreciation. The author has no connection with Götz Puppenmanufaktur, but gives them credit for the amazing dolls they produce.

Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts

Friday, July 26, 2024

Hidden Talents

Mariah looked up from her writing. "How do you see and hear what dogs and cats are thinking?" she asked Emil.

Emil thought for a moment. "I don't really know," he replied. "I guess, when I noticed it with the dogs, I thought everyone could do that."

"What did you see and hear with the dogs?" Mariah asked then.

"Nothing important," Emil said. "It was just things like finding a worm in the backyard, or chasing a squirrel, or it's time to go for a walk."

"I suppose," Mariah suggested, "the dogs are happy and have everything they need. What Marmalade needed to say was important."
Emil nodded. "Yes, Marmalade really wanted Mandy to know that she belonged to him now," he agreed.

Mariah was still puzzled. "I wonder why I can't see or hear the animals in my head," she said. "I wonder if Mandy can explain it.

"Maybe we should go ask," Emil said. "I'd like to know, too.

The two dolls found Mandy on the table in the workroom, selecting yarn for a project. She looked up when they climbed up onto the table.

"Mandy," Mariah began, "we have a question we think you might be able to answer."

Mandy put down the yarn she was holding. "What is it?" she asked.

"Well," Mariah began. "Emil can't see much without his glasses, and he can't hear at all without the hearing aids in his glasses, but he can see and hear what dogs and cats are saying, just the way we see and hear in our heads what other dolls are saying without using our eyes or ears."

"Yes," Emil agreed. "I wondered how I can do that when other dolls can't. We thought you might know."

"You know," Mandy began, "I had been wondering about just that very thing ever since we found out that Emil has this special ability."

"So I decided to do some research," Mandy went on.

"What did you find out?" Emil asked.
"Well," Mandy continued, "We are made to be like people, so we react like people in a lot of ways."

Mariah and Emil looked at each other and nodded. They knew this already.

"I have known for a long time," Mandy went on, "that people who are born blind or deaf often grow to have special abilities, like being really good at music or hearing things most people can't hear, or a deaf person noticing things they see that hearing people don't."

"I've read about that," Mariah said. "It's as if they have a superpower to make up for what's missing."

"I remember being in my box," Emil said. "My box was lined up with with a lot of other dolls in their boxes. They were talking about what they could see, but all I could see was when it was light and when it was dark."

"Sometimes they talked about noises or sounds," Emil continued, "but I didn't understand what they meant. I didn't find out about hearing until I came out of my box and I got these special glasses with the built-in hearing aids."

"That's what I thought," Mandy agreed. "You are like a human person who was born deaf and nearly blind, because you couldn't hear, and you couldn't see much of anything."

"I thought, of course," Mandy went on, "that people who are blind or deaf just learn their special abilities, because they need them to make up for not being able to see or hear."

"That would make sense," Emil agreed, and Mariah nodded.

"However," Mandy went on, "I found out that some scientists (SY-en-tists), those are people who study things in the real world and figure out how things work. Scientists have learned that there is a part of the human brain for hearing and a part of the brain for seeing. When these parts of the brain are not used because the person is deaf or blind, they do other things that the person needs or can use."

"So that's why I can hear what animals say," Emil said.

"I think so," Mandy agreed.

"Some of the dolls had pets, usually dogs, with them in their boxes," Emil went on. "There were doll pets alone in boxes, too. I could hear the animals, and see what they were thinking."

"Yes," Mandy agreed. "Maybe you were able to use that part of your brain to listen to the animals, because you weren't hearing anything with your ears or seeing with your eyes. At least I think that's what happened."

"I wonder what part of my brain that is," Emil said thoughtfully.

"Actually," Mandy said, "if we took your head off, we would not be able to see a brain in there. We might see the inside of your eyes, but no brain."

The dolls all thought about what that might look like. Emil did not offer to take his head off.

"Dolls only have a pretend brain," Mandy continued, "but they work for us the way human brains work, and maybe yours is like the brain of someone who was born deaf and blind but had some other ability instead."

"Wow!" Mariah exclaimed. "I wish I could talk to animals." She looked at Emil. "You're really special, Emil!"

"You're special, too, Mariah," Mandy said. "You have a gift for writing, and if you keep working on it the way you do, you can make your writing even better. You are really good at putting words together."

"I'm special, too?" Mariah asked.

"Yes," agreed Mandy. "We are all special, but the way each one of us is special is different for each doll. Children need us to be different from each other, because each child is different and special, and when children meet other children, they need to know that it's normal for them to be different. It's what makes human people––and dolls––interesting."

Just then, Marmalade came into the workroom. He jumped up on the table and came over to the dolls. He looked at Emil.
"Meow!" Marmalade said.

"Marmalade says that cats are very special," Emil said.

"Of course they are!" Mandy exclaimed. "Marmalade is sweet and beautiful. I'm glad he found me!"

"Meow," said Marmalade.
"He says he loves you, too," Emil told Mandy.

"I always wondered what meow meant," Mariah said, "and now I know."

"Meow means cats are special," she said, "but it also means 'I love you.'"

Cast--
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
Marmalade: Purrrfect Cats from KTL

You can follow The Doll's Storybook here.

Do you have questions or comments for us? Would you like to order an autographed copy of one of our books? You can email us at thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

Note: No dolls were harmed during production of this blog. All dolls shown are Götz Happy Kidz, Classic Kidz or Little Kidz. If you like these stories and are willing, please make a donation of any amount to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or any organization that supports pediatric cancer research and treatment. We are not affiliated with St. Jude in any way other than these donations.

"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook are available from BookBaby and other booksellers worldwide, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Author's page on Amazon.

Royalties (net proceeds) go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. If you don't get free shipping elsewhere, buy from Book Baby. Half of the price goes to charity (specific information available upon request). Autographed copies of all three books are available from the author. (Multiple books to the same address have a discount on shipping.) To inquire, email thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

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Friday, May 10, 2024

The Spelling Test

It was a sunny afternoon, but the dolls were indoors, doing their homework.

"Can you help me, Mariah?" Jolena asked. "You're so good with words and writing."

Mariah closed her book. "I will if I can," she said. "What do you need help with?"

"Well," Jolena began, "I have to know these words for spelling."
Mariah looked at the list.

Here's the list.

bough
bought
brought
cough
dough
enough
rough
though
thought
through
tough

"They are all spelled almost the same," Mariah pointed out.

"Yes, but they don't sound the same," Jolena sighed. "It makes them hard to spell. I can read them when I see them, but when I need to write them, I can't remember. It's hard enough to figure out what goes with the o-u-g-h for each word during the test, but I want to be able to remember them when I need them for real!"

"I understand," Mariah said. "It's because the English language has changed since the words came about. We don't say them the same as dolls did hundreds of years ago, but the spelling often has stayed almost the same."

"Why do we have to keep the old spelling, then?" Jolena wanted to know.

"Well," Mariah began, "if we kept changing the spelling, then someday dolls wouldn't be able to read books and stories that were written today, like the book Mandy is reading," she pointed out, gesturing to where Mandy was sitting, across from them, "and that would be too bad."

Mariah looked at the list again. "You know the words when you read them, so maybe it would help if you put them in groups and then used each one in a sentence," she suggested. "That way you're working back from what you already know––reading––to what's hard––writing them. Let's group them the way they sound, so it makes more sense. Thought, brought and bought all rhyme, but cough ends differently. Without the 't' on the end of that word, the 'gh' sounds like 'f'. It sounds like the others except for that."

Jolena wrote each of those words down on her paper. She and Mariah checked the list to be sure that Jolena had spelled them correctly.

"Now for a sentence," Jolena said. "I thought I could do a triple flip," she said and then wrote it down next to the word 'thought'.
"Charlotte brought me a glass of water," she said and then wrote it out, too.

"I bought some flour to make some bread," she said as she wrote it out.
"Billy has a cough," she wrote. Then she laughed. It was hard to imagine Billy trying to cough, when he couldn't even open his mouth and only had pretend lungs, anyway.
"That's great," Mariah told her. "Now let's see if there's another set we can put together.

"How about though and dough?" Jolena asked.
Mariah looked at the list. "Those go together, but I don't see any others that sound the same," she agreed.

Jolena wrote out, "Billy doesn't have a fever, though." (Billy with a fever was funny, too.) Then she wrote out, "I need the flour to make bread dough."
"That's good," Mariah told her. "Do you see any other words that we can put together?" she asked.
"What about rough and enough?" Jolena asked.
"Yes," Mariah agreed, looking to see if she could find any others that sounded the same. "I see one more," she said.
Jolena looked at the list of spelling words. "I see it! Tough!"
she exclaimed. "These words have that funny 'f' sound at the end again, even though the letter 'f' isn't in the word! It's like cough, except that the rest of the word doesn't sound the same."

Then she wrote out each word in her notebook. "This spelling lesson is tough!" she wrote.

Then she though for a moment. "I will do well if I study enough," she wrote. After another moment she wrote, "The boats came back home because the sea was rough."
Mariah nodded her approval. "Those are good sentences," she said. "Now let's see if we can group any more."
"It's easier now that we have used some of the words," Jolena said.
Both dolls looked at the list. There were three words left, but none of them sounded like any of the others.

"Well," said Mariah, "let's just do each of them separately."
Jolena thought about bough. "There was a bird's nest on a bough in the tree," she wrote. Then she looked up.

"Good!" Mariah said.
Jolena thought about thought. "I thought this spelling test was hard," she wrote.
The two dolls looked at each other and smiled. "See?" Mariah said. "It isn't that difficult. We just needed to take it in small bites."

"It will be easier when I am through studying," Jolena wrote.
"There are a lot of words in English that are spelled funny," Jolena said. "I guess writing them, saying them and using them a lot makes it easier to remember them. I thought learning these words would be difficult, but you have made it easy. Thank you for helping me!"

"It's always easier to learn something," Mariah said, "if you can figure out how to use what you are learning. That's why you wrote the sentences."

"Like the word, flour," Jolena agreed. It sounds like flower but it's spelled differently. I don't have any trouble remembering, because it's in my recipes when I bake, and sometimes when I cook other things."

Mandy looked up from her book. "Flower and flour. Those are homophones (HO-muh-fohnz)," she said. "That's what we call two words you say the same but that have different spellings and different meanings, like bough from your spelling list and bow like when you take a bow after you are done performing."

"I do this," Jolena said, "when I'm done performing a dance." She got down to the floor and bent over to show them.

"When I am done performing a triple flip, though, I do this."
Jolena said as she threw her arms in the air. "Only I'm holding my ski poles," she added.

"That isn't a bow," Mariah said. "That's saying, 'Hooray! I made it!" They all agreed.
Jolena climbed back up into the big chair. "How do you know about...homophones?" she asked Mandy.

Mandy picked up a book she had on the box she was using to sit on. "One of our readers sent me this book," she said. "It tells all about it, and it's fun to read."

"Let's read it together," Mariah suggested.

The three dolls settled on the couch to read.

"I just thought of something," Jolena said. "I thought my spelling list was tough, but at least I don't have to spell 'homophone'!"

Cast--
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend

The book How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear? by Brian P. Cleary can be found in libraries, online here, on Amazon and elsewhere. Mandy wishes to thank reader and fellow knitter Cheryl B. Waters for her generous gift of the book.

Note to children: Dolls sometimes forget to take off their shoes when they get onto a bed, couch or chair, but children play outdoors in their shoes and should always take their shoes off before putting their feet on the furniture.