The Mending Basket · ages 3-5

The Scarf With a Hole

The idea: find the part that repeats, and it tells you what comes next.

Read it

The five-night book 264 words

Five nights, one book

Little children love the same story again. Read this one five nights running, with a different job each night.

listen.
say the last words.
make the guess.
do the 'now you' in the room.
tell it to a toy.

Who is in this book

Bà Tư The grandmother who keeps the basket and does the sewing from VầnTots
Tí a child of the Green Notices small things; says "again"
Stringy Find the part that repeats, and the next one tells itself from BeadTots
Loop Sing the bit that repeats out loud from BeadTots
Beady Add the next one when you have spotted the pattern from BeadTots

Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.

The Honest Page

Which parts of this story are true, stretched or made up?

True

In a pattern that goes red, blue, red, blue, the fifth stripe is red.
Finding the part that repeats is how you work out what comes next in a pattern. Source
Knitters mend a hole by knitting new stitches into it. Source

Stretched

Mending a knitted scarf takes more than one stripe of thread. What we simplified: The story mends it in one go so the pattern is the whole job.

Made up

Stringy, Loop and Beady are made up. Thread and beads do not sing.

Tell it back

Tell the story to a toy, or to a grown-up. When you have, the grown-up taps the button, and a keepsake from The Scarf With a Hole goes on your belt.

Ring the hammer for someone

Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.

Across the Table → For the grown-up: the story in three lines, one question to ask, and one thing to do together.