Since I don’t have a column to share with you this week, I thought I would share one of the silly stories I made up for my son one night during our nightly storytelling ritual. If you want to start a storytelling ritual with your children, please see The Storytelling Advocate for a list of resources.
Storytelling tip: Pick something that your children are interested in, and make it the main character or setting for a story. This story was inspired by my boys’ nascent interest in building, especially with Legos. In it, I also tried to touch on something that my son had been dealing with recently: his frustrations when he couldn’t do something the way he wanted to. I wanted him to know that set-backs are part of building and creating, and part of life!
Lego Boy by Shelli Bond Pabis
Once there was a little Lego boy who lived in a big, Lego city. The city was built by two brothers, and it was sitting up on a table in their room where they always left it.
At night, while the brothers slept, Lego boy would wake up and explore his city and play with his Lego cat.
“I think,” the Lego boy said to his cat, “I could build this city even better!” And he went about rearranging the Lego pieces. He built himself a nice, cozy room for him and his cat to sleep in during the day.
But that night when he woke up, two walls of his room were gone, and he had to put them all back. He also built himself a bed and a chair for him and his cat.
The next night, he was happy to wake up and find that his room was just like he had left it, but there was another place in the city – his other favorite place – that was gone! It was the park where he liked to go with this cat, sit on a bench and look out the window at the moon.
So that night he worked hard to remove all the blocks that had been put right in the middle of his park, and he found the flowers and put them back. He built a bench, and he and his cat had just enough time to sit there awhile and watch the sunrise out of the window before the two little boys woke up.
The next night was Lego boy’s happiest night because when he woke up, he found that nothing had been changed in Lego city. The two little boys must have been busy doing other things that day. So Lego boy and Lego cat sat on the bench in the park and gazed at the moon all night. Just as the sun was rising, they hurried back to their room and went to sleep.
When they woke up that night, however, Lego Boy was heartbroken to see that his room was gone. Everything had been changed! “It’s going to take me all night to fix it again!”
He was very frustrated. “There must be something I can do. Something I haven’t thought of before.”
Lego Boy thought and thought and then realized he would have to go on a journey. He’d search outside the city. He and Lego cat left the city and walked to the edge of the table. He looked out into the room. The two brothers were sleeping peacefully in their beds. He also saw a shelf across the room. On it there were paints, paint brushes, paper, scissors, and…..the answer to his dreams! GLUE!
With the help of Lego Cat, Lego Boy made it across the room, climbed the shelf and got the glue. When they pushed it off the shelf, it made a soft thud on the carpet, and one of the boys turned over in his sleep! Lego Boy and Lego Cat held their breath! Luckily, the boys didn’t wake up.
When they got back to Lego City, Lego Boy collected the pieces he needed to build his walls again, but this time, as he was building them, he poured glue between the pieces. It oozed out as he snapped the pieces together, and he smiled in satisfaction.
It took him all night to build his room again, and right at sunrise, he couldn’t even make it back to his bed! He fell right to sleep on his doorway!
The next day, the little boys were busy doing other things and didn’t notice the glue bottle sitting inside Lego City. But their mother came into their room that afternoon to put laundry away. She noticed it, and she frowned as she tried to pull Lego Boy’s walls apart – they wouldn’t budge.
She called the boys into their room and showed them the glue. “You need to take care of your toys!” She scolded them. “I’m not buying you new Legos if you are going to glue them all together!”
“We didn’t glue them together,” the boys cried. But, of course, the mother didn’t believe them.
When Lego Boy woke up that night, he didn’t know anything about the scolding that the two boys got. He was just very happy to see that the walls to his room were still there, and, in fact, while Lego City got changed around quite a bit over the years, his room always stayed right where he glued it.
***
I apologize in advance if this gives your children the idea to glue their Legos together. 
Remember: Please respect copyright laws. While I’m happy for any parent or teacher to borrow this story, I hope no one is stealing it for other purposes. Don’t plagiarize.
Filed under: Homeschooling, Storytelling as a Teaching Tool, Traditions / Rituals / Holidays Tagged: frustration, helping children deal with frustration, Lego Boy, project-based homeschooling, stories I've made up for my children, storytelling, storytelling as a teaching tool
