Example stories · First Day of School · Ages 5 to 7

Theo and the Dragon Castle Moat

A read-aloud bedtime story, about 4 minutes.

Theo had a plan for the first day of school. He would walk in, say "Hello, I am Theo," and everyone would immediately know he was excellent at making friends.

The trouble was, when Theo actually stood at the classroom door, his mouth forgot the plan completely. His stomach felt like it was full of hopping frogs. Not one frog. A whole pond of them.

"What if I say something weird," Theo whispered to his mom. "What if my voice comes out squeaky."

"Then it comes out squeaky," said Mom, "and somebody will probably laugh, and then you will both be laughing, and that is basically how friends happen."

Theo was not sure that was true. But he took a breath, and he walked in.

The classroom smelled like new crayons and someone's peanut butter sandwich. There were cubbies with paper name tags, and Theo found his own name, spelled out in wobbly blue letters. He put his backpack in his cubby very carefully, as if it might escape.

At the table by the window, a girl was building something enormous out of wooden blocks. It looked like a castle, or possibly a very lumpy dragon.

"I'm building a dragon castle," the girl said, without even looking up. "It needs a moat. Do you know how to build a moat?"

"I do not know how to build a moat," admitted Theo.

"Nobody does," said the girl. "That's why it keeps falling down."

Theo sat next to her. His pond of frogs quieted down, just a little, because it is hard to worry about being liked when there is an urgent moat situation in front of you.

His name was Theo. Her name was Priya. Together they discovered that a moat made of blue paper worked much better than a moat made of nothing, which was what Priya had been trying before.

At morning circle, the teacher, Mr. Alvarez, asked everyone to say one thing they were good at.

"I am good at moats," Theo announced, with total confidence, and the whole circle laughed, the good kind of laugh, the kind where everyone is laughing together instead of at somebody.

Theo laughed too. It turned out Mom was right. Squeaky voices and laughing were, in fact, basically how friends happen.

Lunch came with a tray of things Theo mostly recognized, and a few things he did not, including a green vegetable shaped suspiciously like a tiny tree. Priya ate three of the tiny trees like they were candy, so Theo decided to be brave and try one too. It tasted like a tiny tree. He survived.

By recess, Theo had learned that Priya could do a cartwheel, that the tetherball pole made a good echo if you yelled into it, and that his own new sneakers squeaked in a very satisfying way on the shiny gym floor.

By the end of the day, the frogs in Theo's stomach had settled down into something that felt more like butterflies, the calm kind, the kind that means you had fun and you are tired in a good way.

When Mom picked him up, Theo talked the entire walk home about moats and tiny trees and the echoey tetherball pole, barely stopping to breathe.

"So," said Mom, once he finally paused, "did you make a friend?"

"Her name is Priya," Theo said. "Tomorrow we're building a drawbridge."

That night, Theo's mom tucked him in and turned off the big light, leaving just the small lamp glowing gold in the corner.

"Were you nervous, this morning?" she asked.

"A little," Theo admitted, his eyes already drifting shut. "But my voice only got squeaky once."

"Once is a very good number," Mom said softly.

Theo thought about the dragon castle, and the blue paper moat, and Priya's cartwheel, and how tomorrow there would be a drawbridge to build.

His eyes grew heavier. His breathing grew slower. Somewhere in his sleepy mind, a paper moat filled with paper water, calm and still and blue.

"Goodnight, Theo," Mom whispered.

Theo did not answer. He was already asleep, dreaming of castles, with not a single frog left hopping anywhere at all.