The palm tree’s tale

Palm Tree

The palm tree wafted his branches in the draught from the window. He glanced down at the Lego baby in its push chair on the carpet beneath him. The baby was sound asleep, and the leafy branches of the palm were shading him from the late afternoon sun as it poured through the glass in the playroom.

Marc had taken the small cars off to race through the village. Palm Tree realised that Marc had forgotten all about the baby!

Suddenly the Lego baby started to cry. Palm Tree swished and waved his branches nervously. What should he do? Marc couldn’t hear the baby’s cries because the magician was asleep. Only the magician could make the children hear the toys.

Marc pushed the police car through the roads, chanting “der-der, der-der, der-der” as he raced them across roundabouts and through traffic lights.

At that moment, Natalie came into the playroom. “Marc!” she called. “Stop that noise!”

Marc turned round and suddenly the playroom was very quiet. “Why should I?” he asked.

“It’s annoying me,” said Natalie. “Come and help me with the doll house.”

Marc made a choking noise. Palm Tree watched, amused. He knew that Marc and Natalie were friends. But would he play with the doll house just to please her? And what would they do about the crying baby?

Marc got up. “You do the doll house. Make tea for us. And I’ll bring the baby in when I’ve taken her for a walk.”

He went over and grabbed the push chair. Then, as Palm Tree gazed in horror, he zoomed it round the roundabout, past the airport and up into the air with a whizzzzzz. Palm Tree was certain the baby would fall out of the push chair!

Just as he realised the baby had stopped crying, Marc zoomed the push chair round and round like a stunt plane and crash-landed it into the sand pit.

Palm Tree was astonished to hear the baby laughing and giggling. But he knew that Marc couldn’t hear the baby because the Magician was still fast asleep.

“Marc! Bring the baby home. It’s tea time,” called Natalie from the doll house. She arranged the dolls round the kitchen table.

When Marc pushed the pram into the kitched of the doll house, Natalie said, “This house is boring and hot. We need to sort it out.”

Marc looked puzzled. Then he shouted, “I know! I’ll get the palm tree and plant it in the garden outside the kitchen window. It can shade the dolls from the sun.”

So Palm Tree found himself carried to the doll house and put just outside the window. He was delighted. He’d never seen into the doll house before.

As the sun went down, he stood staring in the window as the dolls ate their tea and Natalie read them a story. When she took them upstairs to bed, Palm Tree stopped wafting in the breeze and settled down for the night.

He was so happy to be sleeping next to the doll house that he dozed off nearly immediately. And his dreams were full of the sandy shores and moonlight beaches where he used to live.

The moral of this tale is that there is always something new to do, and if you wait, the right opportunity will come along.

The finger paint’s tale

Yellow Finger Paint

The yellow finger paint tub was sitting on the window ledge in the sun when someone picked her up and dumped her on the table. “Ooh,” she said. “I’m going to have fun today. Natalie and Jake must be going to make a picture.”

Yellow Finger Paint laughed out loud. She loved being messy and smarmy and slithery. She loved it best when the children made her look like clumps of golden daffodils or rays of a huge shining sun.

Then she heard Natalie speak.

“I feel sorry for the blue and red paints,” Natalie said to Jake. “They don’t show up as well on the black paper. Let’s mix them with the yellow and make something else.”

“Yes,” said Jake. “No daffodil colours today. No sun, no yellow caravans and no yellow monsters.”

Yellow Finger Paint was horrified. They were going to mix her with other colours just so they would look better. She trembled in her tub of slippy-sloopy yellow. She got so angry that she slopped over the side a bit as Jake pulled off her lid.

“That serves them right,” she muttered, as she landed in a dollop right in the middle of the black paper. “Now they’ll remember how lovely I am all by myself.”

But Natalie clapped her hands. “Wow, that’s exactly what we need. It’s given me a brilliant idea.”

Natalie pushed her fingers into the yellow blob. Yellow Finger Paint tried to squirm in and out of Natalie’s fingers to make the squelchy lines go all wrong.

But Jake grinned. “I’ve guessed what you’re making,” he said to Natalie. “I’ll help.”

Yellow Finger Paint was cross. She was trying to be naughty, and each time she tried, it seemed as if she did exactly what they wanted. So she thought hard and then decided to do nothing. See? She would NOT help them. She would NOT move unless they made her. She would sit right there and sulk!

But Natalie and Jake seemed very happy about that. They added some red finger paint and moved it in huge sweeping movements like tongues of flame. Jake shoved the yellow into the red as they went next to each other. “Look, it’s making orange as they mix!” he said.

Before long, the children had pushed and shoved all sorts of colours in long flames all over the black paper. Even Yellow Finger Paint had to admit it all felt beautiful. But because she was stuck on the paper, she didn’t know what Jake and Natalie were painting. And she really wanted to know!

Finally, Jake took up the blue and green finger paint tubs and put dobs of colour all over the top of the paper: red, green, blue and white. He didn’t mix them, and Yellow Finger Paint felt a bit cross again. But then Jake said, “We need a few finger marks of bright yellow here too. Then it will be finished.”

Yellow Finger Paint filled with pride as she was put here and there, one finger mark at a time, in amongst the red, green, blue and white dots at the top of the paper. “I knew they would want my bright yellow colour in the end,” she told herself.

Jake and Natalie put the lids back on the tubs of finger paint and stacked them back on the window ledge. The sun had gone in now and night was falling. Yellow Finger Paint felt sleepy. But just as she fell asleep, she heard Natalie say, “That’s the best bonfire picture we ever painted. And the yellow was the most important bit. She made the flames and fire perfect and the her sparks are flashing everywhere.”

The moral of this tale is that doing new things together can be as much fun as doing things on our own.

The pink chalk’s tale

Pink Chalk

Everything was quiet in the playroom. Mark and Kaylee were supposed to be tidying up the toys ready for bed. But Pink Chalk knew they were not!

That was because Pink Chalk was not in the chalk basket. He was in Mark’s hand, and he was drawing pink lines on Kaylee’s face.

Mark pressed the chalk on her cheeks and said, “I’m making you look like a cat. A big scary wild cat. These are your long spiky whiskers that will scratch any giraffe who tries to eat you!”

Kaylee kept her face straight. “And when you’re finished,” she said, “I shall make your face look like a giraffe. And you can try to catch me.”

Mark looked excited, even though he should have been putting the chalks away. Pink Chalk was excited too, because this was much better than drawing pink flowers on the small blackboard in the corner. That was squeaky and boring. This was brilliant. He didn’t feel a bit like going to sleep.

Mark added some green chalk on Kaylee’s forehead and then let Kaylee colour his own nose with black chalk. She put giraffe blotches in yellow and brown on his cheeks, and some long pretend eyelashes in bright blue above his eyes. Then she put the chalks on the floor and said, “Done! Let’s get wild!”

Pink Chalk lay on the carpet and watched in amazement as Mark snarled and jumped at Kaylee. Kaylee bounced out of Mark’s way every time he sprang at her. They made so much noise that Pink Chalk was frightened someone would come and stop them having fun.

Just then, Monkey flopped off the shelf behind them and shouted, “Stop! I’ve got an idea.”

Mark and Kaylee turned round. Mark said, “We don’t want puppets playing with us. We’re real jungle animals.”

Pink Chalk thought that was a horrid thing to say. But Monkey just said, “You’ll like this idea. Let’s open a safari park. The puppets can sit around on hills and in fields, and you two can be the ones that all the visitors come to see.”

Kaylee looked at Mark, and Mark looked at Kaylee. Pink Chalk thought they were speaking to each other without saying anything. A bit like the real animals!

“Good idea,” said Mark. “But we’ll need a notice telling people how much it costs to come in and watch us.”

“Well I can’t write. I’m just a puppet,” said Monkey. “And you two can’t, because you’re a giraffe and a wild cat. So we’ll have to do without a notice.”

But Pink Chalk knew exactly how to solve the problem. He looked over at the magician, lying quietly on his tray, trying to get to sleep. “Psst!” he said.

The magician opened one eye and glared at Pink Chalk.

Pink Chalk said, “Can you help me speak to Mark and Kaylee? I won’t take long. I know you’re tired.”

The magician sighed, but touched his magic staff so that Mark would be able to hear Pink Chalk.

“Mark!” called Pink Chalk. “Shall I write you a notice on the blackboard?”

Mark picked up Pink Chalk. “You’re brilliant,” he said.

Suddenly, writing on the blackboard was no longer just a squeaky and boring job. Pink Chalk made beautiful letters and coloured them in with twirls and swirls until he’d made the most wonderful notice in the whole world. Mark and Kaylee loved it.

And they put Pink Chalk carefully back into the duck-shaped basket, where he fell asleep dreaming of safari parks and wild cats with pink whiskers.

The moral of this tale is that boring tasks can be very interesting if they’re done to help someone else.

The wooden block’s tale

Wooden Block

The wooden block woke with a shock. He’d been daydreaming because no one had played with the bricks for a long time.

But now, Ben was tipping them all out on the floor. “Let’s play a block game,” he said to Jake. “A sort of competition.”

A competition? Wooden Block was excited. That sounded fun. He hoped he would be part of the winning building.

Jake and Ben started sorting Wooden Block and his friends into six piles. Wooden Block was small and square, so he was put with the others like himself. Long ones went in one place, thin ones in another – and when they were all sorted, there was a pile of funny shaped ones left: triangles, curves and arches.

“We’ll put them all together in one group,” said Ben.

Then they gave each group a number and rolled two dice. Wooden Block found out that when they rolled a three, they took a brick like himself. He liked being number three and was soon picked up and put into Jake’s building.

It was a very odd building because Ben said you had to build with the bricks you won. Wooden Block was laughing to himself because their buildings became wobbly and crooked!

“DONE!” shouted Jake soon afterwards.

But before you could say “bricks are brilliant”, Jake and Ben had chucked puppets at them and knocked them flat.

Wooden Block was a bit bruised, and lay there on the floor, fighting to get his breath back.

But he couldn’t lie there long. Ben said they’d to build ALL the blocks into one huge, tall building as fast as they could. “Bigger and better! Get going!” he shouted.

Wooden Block found himself placed level with Jake’s knees – and the building grew higher and higher as Ben added an arch, a tall straight block and two small fat bricks on top of him.

He looked up and saw that the building was now as tall as Jake’s shoulders. He felt it start to wobble.

“Oh dear,” he said to the wooden arch above him. “It’s a long way to fall down and I feel battered and bruised already.”

The arch said, “It’s better than staying in that boring box all day while the other toys have fun.”

Wooden Block wanted to nod to show he agreed, but he knew that if he did, they would all fall down right then.

When Ben stretched up to put the last brick on the building, Wooden Block held his breath – he knew Ben and Jake were about to topple them over with a crash!

But then Jake said, “Let’s see if we can take them apart, one at a time, without knocking them down.”

“Great idea!” said Ben. “We’ll put them to bed in tidy rows.”

And that’s what they did.

Wooden Block had to wait a long time for his turn, and he was very sleepy by the time they laid him next to a row of long thin blocks. But the knocking noises of the other bricks coming into the box kept him awake a bit longer.

Just long enough to hear Ben say, “Good night, wooden blocks. We had a brilliant time with you today.”

Wooden Block dreamt all night of wonderful buildings, large and small – and in all of them, someone had placed him over the main doorway where everybody could admire him!

The moral of this tale is that people don’t always do what you expect.

The tractor’s tale

The red and blue tractor

The little lego girl, Jaz, drove her red and blue tractor up and down the field in the sand tray. It was a bit boring. Up… down… up… down she went, getting hotter and hotter in the afternoon sun. She wished Ben would think of something else for her to do.

She liked Ben. The other children always played with the police car or the fire engine, and made loud noisy stories with lots of accidents. But Ben liked to do other things, like race his cars, make gardens and houses, or shift sand with the digger. Today he was ploughing fields. Or rather Jaz was.

Suddenly, without warning, a cow jumped out in front of the tractor. Jaz slammed on the brakes.

“You silly cow,” she shouted. “I nearly knocked you over. Why are you wandering over my nicely ploughed field?”

The cow mooed sadly and told Jaz what had happened. “The wind blew so hard in the night that it knocked down the fence round our field. And now my calf, Daisy, has gone missing.”

“Oh dear,” said Jaz. “I’ll keep an eye open for Daisy while I’m ploughing my field. But please take care not to get run over!”

Jaz was now happy to plough up and down. She wanted to help the cow find her calf.

“Daiseeee!” she called every few minutes.

Ben made her drive all round the field, looking behind bushes and trees. She also looked into the ditches that drained the water. But she didn’t find Daisy.

“I’ll have to call in the police,” said Ben with a sigh. “They’re good at finding lost things.”

Jaz was upset. She didn’t want the policeman to come. She wanted to be the one who found Daisy. So she crossly made some zig-zag lines with her plough, so that it would be difficult for the policeman to walk around the field or drive his car across it.

Ben brought in his cleverest sheepdog, too, and made them all search high and low for Daisy. But when supper time came, there was still no sign of her. Her mother was mooing quietly in the corner of the field and refusing to eat her hay.

Jaz drove the tractor back to the farmyard. Just as she was getting out, she heard a funny muffled sound.

She jumped off the tractor seat and raced to the old wooden barn. She had to pull really hard on the door to open it. And there inside was Daisy the calf, lying on the floor and whimpering in the dark. Her hoof was caught in some wood that had fallen on her.

“Oh Daisy!” said Jaz. “What happened?”

“The wind blew the door shut and then I couldn’t see in the dark,” said Daisy. “So I stumbled into the wood pile.”

“I’ll go get the policeman and Ben,” said Jaz. “Between us we’ll be able to lift this wood off you.”

It was nearly bedtime before Daisy was free. By this time, the sheepdog had guided her mother all the way down to the farmyard. She licked Daisy and mooed her thanks to Jaz for rescuing her calf.

“We all helped set her free,” said Jaz. “I was just the one who found her. Now you take her home, and we’ll mend the fences so that Daisy can’t get lost again.”

And that’s exactly what they did. But they didn’t have to worry about the noise of their hammering and nailing. Daisy was fast asleep after her adventure, and her snoring was the loudest sound in the field!

The moral of this tale is that you often need to work as a team if you want to get something done.

The doll house’s tale

The doll house

The doll house was feeling bored. No one played with her any more. Minnie Doll sat where she had been left, in the bathroom on the mat. Grandpa Doll was downstairs on the settee. He hadn’t moved for a month. The baby was still in his high chair in the kitchen, but no one was feeding him. Berta Doll was on the floor staring at nothing. She’d been staring at nothing for weeks. “Oh, when is someone going to play with me again?” thought the doll house.

The doll house was special. Every room could be taken away and stood on its own. The rooms could be piled high like a block of flats, or stood on their own like posh mansions. But the children who played in the playroom seemed to have forgotten about the things she could do.

Suddenly the door of the playroom burst open and Jake and Leona rushed in.

“Bagsy play with the animals,” shouted Leona.

The doll house felt her floorboards creak and groan. The breeze blew through her windows and sighed like a ghost.

Jake must have heard, because he looked over at her and said, “Hey! That doll house comes apart, doesn’t it? Let’s make a row of houses and garages!”

And before she knew it, the doll house was in pieces on the floor. The square section that had been the bathroom was lined up first, the living room second, the kitchen third, the bedroom fourth, and the attic room last in the row. Jake had made a street of houses!

Jake pulled the furniture out of two sections. “These are the garages,” he said, and put the police car, the fire engine, and the ambulance in one, and a posh shiny car in the other. “The rest can be houses.”

Leona stood Grandpa Doll at the door of his new little house. Jake sat the baby in his pram outside a house further down the road. Grandpa waved to the baby and the baby coo-ed and grinned back.

Suddenly Berta Doll tripped over the carpet in her new house. “Ow!” she cried.

“Emergency!” shouted Jake. “Get the ambulance.”

Leona grabbed the ambulance from its garage and raced it down to Berta’s house.

“You’ll be okay,” she told Berta. “But you’ve broken your leg.”

She drove Berta in the ambulance to the hospital. Jake picked up the doctor’s and nurse’s equipment and started operating on the broken leg.

After a while, he said, “Now don’t walk on this leg for six days. You’ll have to hop on crutches.”

Leona made Berta some crutches from two pencils, and they laughed as she hopped and jumped to her new house.

The doll house was pleased she was being played with again, and was even more pleased when Leona planted trees and flowers round the row of houses. Jake put fences round the gardens.

Then Leona’s mum came in and said: “Time to go to bed, kids!”

“Bother, bother,” said Jake. “I was just going to change these houses into something else. Something even better!”

Something better? The doll house was so excited she didn’t think she would be able to sleep at all. But soon she was fast asleep, dreaming of being a skyscraper in New York, or a village of igloos in Iceland. She would never be a bored old doll house again!

The moral of this tale is that things don’t have to stay the way they are. They can be changed.

The monkey puppet’s tale

The monkey puppet

Monkey sat in the pretend tree on the back of the chair and watched the other puppets fighting on the ground below him.

Frog was green and bouncy and trying to land blows on Koala’s head. Koala wasn’t bothered. He just laughed and jumped aside. “Ha ha! See if I care. I’m faster than you. You’ll never catch me!”

Rabbit was dodging round Lion’s paws as Lion tried to stamp on him. Lion got more and more cross. “Stand still and let me get you,” he shouted. “This is supposed to be a fight!”

Cat was chasing Dog’s tail, faster and faster, round and round, and then pouncing on Dog when he stopped for a minute. “Ouch, that hurt,” barked Dog.

Monkey wished he was playing too. But Jake had put his arm in the pretend tree on the back of the chair and Monkey had to stay there, on Jake’s hand, till Jake decided to join in. It wasn’t much fun.

Jake’s friends, Mark, Leona and Natalie, were shouting so much that Jake had to yell really loudly to make himself heard. “Listen everyone. I don’t want a puppet fight. I want to play hide and seek with them.”

Everyone stopped their puppets from fighting and looked at Jake.

Natalie asked, “How can we do that? They’re on our hands and we all know where we are.”

The children thought for a moment.

Then Mark said, “Why don’t we let one of us hide the puppets somewhere and then the rest of us go find them?”

Jake grabbed all the puppets. “Me first,” he said.

The other children left the room. Monkey found himself being carried all round the room while Jake hid the other puppets. Then Jake whispered to Monkey, “No one will find you where I’m putting you. You’re the best puppet ever so I want you to win. Make sure you keep quiet so they don’t hear you!” And Monkey found himself being put in a very odd place!

“Come in!” called Jake to Leona, Mark and Natalie. “Start looking now! The last puppet to be found is the winner.”

Leona found Lion straight away. His paw was poking out from behind the chair! Then Mark found Rabbit on the window ledge.

Monkey watched from his hiding place as Natalie crept round the room looking under and over and behind everything. Where were Cat and Dog?

“Gotcha!” she shouted. Both of them were behind the sand tray. That left Koala, Frog and himself, Monkey. He kept very quiet, just as Jake had told him.

Mark walked into Koala by mistake. “Ouch!” he shouted. He’d stubbed his toe on Koala who was stuffed against the bean bag.

The Leona found Frog. Frog had been sitting in the box of bricks trying not to be seen.

Monkey shook with excitement. He’d won the game! He saw Jake looking at him and winked back.

It was bedtime before the other children found him. He’d been lying inside the doll house on a lovely soft bed and had fallen asleep while waiting! “Love you,” he said sleepily to Jake. “That was much better than fighting.”

The moral of this story is that people can often think up better ideas for interesting things to do.