stories

Friday, May 22, 2026

The Dental Exam

Jerry sat nervously in the dentist chair. The clock on the wall showed 9:13 am. The dentist came in and told Jerry that the first thing they would do would be to take x-rays of his teeth. Next, she started poking around Jerry’s mouth with her sharp, shiny metal instruments. Dr. Gonzalez told him that is would take just a few minutes to check and clean his teeth.

Jerry’s mind started to race as he felt the tapping and scraping on his molars, which are the teeth in the back of the mouth. Was Dr. Gonzalez going to find any cavities? Jerry wondered if he had been eating too many foods with too much sugar. Jerry thought about what his dad told him about drinking soda, and how bad it was for his teeth. Jerry started to sweat in the dentist chair as the assistant came back in the room with his x-rays. Jerry tried to remember if he had been brushing his teeth every morning before going to school, and every night before going to bed.

To Jerry, it seemed like it took forever. He had to keep his mouth open for a long time. He felt drool leaking out of the side of his mouth. The paste Dr. Gonzalez used to clean his teeth tasted really bad, like medicine. “That’s it”, Dr. Gonzalez finally said with a smile, “No cavities.”

Relieved it was over, Jerry looked up at the clock again. It was 10:02 am. It seemed like the appointment had taken all day. He thought he’d be going back home now, but as he got in the car with his mom, she said, “Great! I can get you back to school in time for you to take your spelling test,”

Water

Water is life. Without water, humans, other animals, and plants cannot live. Humans need water everyday, and we use water in many ways that are important to our health and comfort.

In the United States, we are lucky to have clean water most of the time. We use this water to drink, to cook with to clean our bodies, our dishes, and our clothes. Farmers spray water on crops like corn, tomatoes, strawberries, and hundreds more foods in their fields that we eat. Ranchers give water to their animals and use water to grow grasses that animals like cows, pigs, and chickens feed on. Water is used to clean foods like lettuce, carrots, and radishes.

Besides providing us food, water is used for human enjoyment. Water fills swimming pools, hot tubs, and water parks. Water is used in fountains at parks and public places. Water is used to clean cars. Water is used to keep care engines running cool.

Water keeps our lawns green and helps the flowers and other plants grow. Without water, people would not be able to decorate the outside of homes, schools, and libraries with green and colorful plants.

The United States is fortunate to have so much rain and snow that gives us our clean water each year. Not every place on Earth has this gift. Many countries have little water, or very little clean water. We need to protect the water we have and conserve it, so it will always be around us for the thousands of ways we use it.

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Why People Love Dogs

People love dogs for many reasons. Some people like dogs because they can be friends to people. Dogs can pick things up, like a newspaper or a pair of slippers, and bring them to a person. Dogs can play with kids. Dogs can play fetch with a stick. Some dogs can catch a ball or a frisbee. There are dogs that can jump into a river or do other tricks.

Dogs can be friends to people who are lonely. Dogs can help older people feel younger. Dogs can wag their tails and show a person that they are happy to see them.

Dogs can help blind people walk safely to work, the library, or to the store. Dogs can help police officers get criminals. Dogs can use their sense of smell to help find a lost child.

Dogs can do so many things to help people or make them happy. It is great that we live in a world with dogs.

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Monday, May 18, 2026

Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs

Brandon likes dinosaurs. He is a five year old boy who has lots of toys and books about dinosaurs. He often watches television programs about dinosaurs, and is even starting to look for information about dinosaurs using the internet. Lots of kids and adults are fascinated with dinosaurs. People who are interested in dinosaurs want to learn the names of the dinosaurs, what they look like, what they ate, and when they lived.

Dinosaurs are creatures that have names like tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, brontosaurus, and pterodactyl. That last one is really hard to spell because the ‘p’ at the beginning is silent. Some dinosaurs are very large, but some are small. Some can swim, and some, like the pterodactyl, can fly. A large number of dinosaurs walked the earth. Some dinosaurs were carnivores, which means they ate meat, others were herbivores, which means they ate mostly plants, and still others were omnivores, which means they ate both plants and animals in their diets.

Even after more than one hundred years of study, there are still differences in the theories about how dinosaurs became extinct. Most paleontologists, which are experts on dinosaurs, believe dinosaurs died out because of a change in climate which killed them quickly, or affected the food supply available to them, which led to their starvation and death. Even though dinosaurs have been extinct for tens of millions of years, people continue to be fascinated by them.

Maria Gets Better

Maria Gets Better

Maria is as smart as anyone. She can do most of her school work by herself. She can learn a song by heart really fast. Maria also keeps her backpack clean and her desk organized. Once in a while, she will even help other students in her class with their math.

Reading is Maria’s harder subject. She knows all her letter sounds, but sometimes gets mixed up when reading a word like “read” out loud, which sometimes can sound like the tall grass plant called a “reed”, and other times sounds like the color ‘red’. There are many other examples of tough words like that in English.

English is not the first language Maria learned to speak. Before she came to the United States when she was seven, Maria lived in Mexico with her family. Her Spanish was perfect, but now she had to learn a whole new language. Maria was nervous coming to a new school, and sometimes she didn’t understand what her teacher was saying, but she didn’t give up. She tries hard in class and does all of her homework.

Maria goes to the library at night to study with her sister Elena, who is in high school. Little by little, Maria is learning to read bigger words, understand what they mean, and is able to handle words like “to”, “too”, and “two”, even when they all sound the same. She now knows that each has a different meaning. Maria is proud of herself for being patient and trying her best.

Ants

Ants

What do you know about ants? Did you say that ants are small? You are right. Are there different kinds of ants? Yes. You might know about red and black ants. There are thousands of other types of ants all over the world.

Ants have large heads and six legs. Ants are very strong. Ants can carry things that are much heavier than they are. An ant can carry a leaf, a crumb of food, a small piece of wood, or another ant. Together, many ants can lift a dead insect that is much larger than they are. Later, they can eat it.

Ants live in groups called colonies. Like bees, the leader of the colony is the queen ant. Ants can live in lots of different places. They can live under the ground, in what is called an ant hill. They can live in tree stumps, in cracks in the sidewalks, under large stones, or in the garden.

At the Park

I like to go up and down. Can you do that? It is fun to play that way. At the park, I can go on the swings. At first, I could not swing by myself, but now I can.

My mom said, “Please do not go too high!” She is afraid I will get hurt. After I stop, my mom said I can play for two more minutes.

I really don’t know how long two minutes it, so I just play until she says it’s time to go.

I do not own or write any of the stories on this blog. I copy the stories from passages I find on the internet.