The Doll's Storybook

Friday, May 17, 2024

Getting the Answers

Billy looked for Veronika as soon as he got home. He found her reading a book.

"Veronika," he said, "we need to talk."

Veronika put the book she was reading down on her chair. "What is it, Billy?" she asked.

"I want to know what's the right thing to do," Billy began. "I know you say we should help people in need if we can, but I'm not sure about this, so I didn't, but now I feel bad."

"Tell me about it," Veronika urged.

"Today we had a science quiz," Billy explained. "We had to know all the planets in order of their distance from the sun. I knew them, because Mandy helped me study for the quiz. She taught me a sentence where each word starts with the first letter of the name of the planet. Then I just had to remember that Mercury is the first 'm' and Mars is the second one, because there are two that start with the letter 'm'. That way, it's easy," Billy explained. "Mandy showed me in a book what each one looks like through a telescope. It showed where each planet is in our solar system. (That's what we call our sun with all the planets circling around it.) That way, I can see it in my head. It isn't just a word," he added.

Veronika nodded encouragement. "It sounds as if you didn't have any trouble with the quiz," Veronika said. "So who needed help?"
"The boy behind me––I don't know his name yet, because he wasn't in my class last year––anyway, the boy behind me asked me quietly to hold my paper so he could see as I wrote my answers."

"I wasn't sure if that was a good idea," Billy went on, "so I shook my head. He was mad at me."

Veronika got down from her chair and climbed up on the box with Billy. "I can see why you didn't want to, Billy," she said, "but tell me why you didn't think it was a good idea?"

"Well," Billy said, "I think Mr. Jackson, that's the teacher, wants to know if we have learned what we were supposed to learn. He didn't want to know if we could just copy the words when we see them."

Veronika nodded.
"I also think," Billy went on, "that the boy behind me didn't want the teacher to know he was asking to copy from me. He asked me in a way that made me think it should be a secret."

"You did the right thing, Billy," Veronika told him. "What he wanted to do is called cheating, and cheating is wrong. It would be wrong for him to copy your paper and wrong for you to let him."

"Cheating!" Billy said. "There's even a word for it. I didn't know that." Then Billy looked down at his hands.

"I felt sorry for him, though," Billy said. "He told me out on the playground that he was going to be punished for failing the quiz. I wish I could have helped him."
"You have helped him, Billy," Veronika explained. "He has learned that you won't let him copy your paper. He has learned that he needs to study for quizzes and tests if he wants to get a good grade."

"If he didn't ever learn that, he would someday find himself with a problem he couldn't solve by cheating, and that problem probably would be a much bigger one than a quiz."

Billy thought about that. "I see what you mean," he said. "I still feel sorry for him and wish I could help."

"It isn't cheating to help someone study," Veronika suggested, "the way Mandy helped you. If you really want to help him, you could do that."

"How do I do that?" Billy asked.

"You could work together on your homework," Veronika said. "It isn't cheating if you don't give him the answers but just discuss the question with him and show him how to find answers for himself. You could even quiz each other about what the teacher says will be on the test or quiz. That will help both of you."

"That sounds like a good way for me to learn, too," Billy said. "That's just what Mandy did. We talked about the planets, not just the names. Then she had me draw a picture of the sun and all the planets with their names. She knows so much!" he added.
"Yes," Veronika agreed. "When we teach someone else, we learn what we're teaching even better."
"Maybe," Billy said "that's why you're so good at knowing how to help people, and what's right and wrong. You teach the rest of us."

For once, Veronika was speechless. She didn't know what to say.

Cast--
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London

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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.

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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.