Story

**The Alien Homework Dilemma** Once upon a time, in a little town called Maplewood, there lived a curious boy named Oliver. Oliver loved building rockets out of cardboard boxes and imagined himself exploring the stars. But he never imagined the stars would come to him! One sunny afternoon, while Oliver was tinkering with his latest cardboard creation in the backyard, he saw a bright flash in the sky. Suddenly, a strange, round spaceship landed right next to his treehouse! Out popped two small, friendly-looking aliens. They had green, bubbly skin, three eyes, and wore backpacks that looked just like Oliver's school bag. "Hello, Earth friend!" squeaked one of the aliens. "I am Zog, and this is my sister, Zib." Oliver blinked in surprise. "Hi, um, aliens! What brings you to Earth?" Zib wiggled her antennas excitedly. "We need help with our homework. We heard Earthlings are super smart!" Oliver grinned. He was pretty good at homework, especially math and science. "Okay, what do you need help with?" Zog pointed to his strange, glowing tablet. "We need to solve these math puzzles. On our planet, Zogonia, everything is about numbers and patterns. But these are tricky even for us!" Oliver looked at the first problem. It was written in swirling, alien symbols, but with a bit of explaining from Zog and Zib, he understood it was a puzzle about counting stars in patterns. "Ah, I see," Oliver said, scratching his head. "Let's try this: imagine the stars are like dots in a line…" For the next hour, Oliver, Zog, and Zib worked together, drawing lines in the dirt and using Oliver's colorful chalks. They laughed a lot too, especially when Zib tried to draw a star but made a funny shape that looked like a squiggly potato. Finally, they solved the last puzzle. Zog jumped up and down. "Hooray! Thanks to Oliver, we finished our homework!" Zib clapped her hands. "Earthling math is fun! You are the best, Oliver!" "I’m glad I could help," Oliver said, feeling proud. "But why is homework so important on Zogonia?" Zog explained, "On our planet, every homework we solve helps power our spaceships. That's why we needed to finish it before we could fly back home!" "Wow, that's amazing!" said Oliver. "I wish my homework powered something cool like that." As a thank you, Zog and Zib gave Oliver a special star-shaped badge. "Wear this, and if you ever need help with your homework, just call us!" Before leaving, they promised to visit again. With a whirl of lights and a happy "Goodbye, friend!" the spaceship whooshed into the sky. Oliver waved until they disappeared amongst the stars. From then on, whenever he looked at his badge, he remembered his out-of-this-world adventure and the day he helped his new alien friends with their homework.