← The Scarf With a Hole

The Mending Basket · The five-night book · ages 3-5

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Read by an AI-generated voice. The words on this page are the transcript.

The Scarf With a Hole

The hammer rang once. A spark jumped off the anvil and did not go out. It waited. They followed.

Bà Tư's scarf had stripes. One stripe was a hole!
"Let's open the basket," said Bà Tư.

The scarf had an old darn. A tiny hammer was sewn by it.

Lid up, lid up.
Who can help us mend?

Tí picked green. "My best one!"
"Find the part that repeats," said Stringy, the spool.
Stringy looked back along the scarf.
Red, blue. Red, blue. Round again!

Find the part that repeats.

Lid up, lid up.
Who can help us mend?

"Sing it with me," said Loop.
Loop's body was beads, red and blue.
"Red, blue, red, blue." The song stopped at the hole.

Find the part that repeats.
Red, blue, red, blue.

What colour comes next? Can you guess?

Lid up, lid up.
Who can help us mend?

"What comes next?" said Beady.
"Red!" said Tí. "Red, blue, red … red!"
The ladybug hopped on with a red thread.

Find the part that repeats.
Red, blue, red, blue.
Next comes red. Hop!

"I'll sew, you check," said Bà Tư.
Tí sang all the way along. Red, blue, red, blue, red, blue.

Lid down, lid down.
Mended. The end.

The spark dimmed to a warm dot and settled back on the anvil. The Green was just the Green again.

Back on the Green

Tí clapped on the swings. Clap, stamp. Clap, stamp.

Now you. Make a row of spoon, fork, spoon, fork. What comes next?

For the grown-up: ask "how did you know?" and let your child sing it back.

Who you met

  • 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.