First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for December

I Saw Three Ships



The Mulberry Bush



The North Wind and the Robin



Dance a Baby

The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky

The Moon's the North Wind's cooky.

He bites it, day by day,

Until there's but a rim of scraps

That crumble all away.


The South Wind is a baker.

He kneads clouds in his den,

And bakes a crisp new moon that . . . greedy

North . . . Wind . . . eats . . . again! 

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 1 My Father Meets the Cat from My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett The First Governor in Boston from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston The Very Short Story of the Foolish Little Mouse from Among the Farmyard People by Clara Dillingham Pierson Rumpelstiltskin from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Around the Fire by Lisa M. Ripperton The Home of Abraham from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge The Responsible Cuckoo from The Swiss Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins Saint Kentigern (Part 1 of 2) from Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman
The Man in the Moon, Anonymous 		Corner-of-the-Street by A. A. Milne
The New Year by Dinah Mulock 		The Lamplighter by Robert Louis Stevenson The Months by Richard B. Sheridan Animal Crackers by Christopher Morley A Diamond or a Coal? by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Tortoise and the Ducks

The Tortoise, you know, carries his house on his back. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot leave home. They say that Jupiter punished him so, because he was such a lazy stay-at-home that he would not go to Jupiter's wedding, even when especially invited.

After many years, Tortoise began to wish he had gone to that wedding. When he saw how gaily the birds flew about and how the Hare and the Chipmunk and all the other animals ran nimbly by, always eager to see everything there was to be seen, the Tortoise felt very sad and discontented. He wanted to see the world too, and there he was with a house on his back and little short legs that could hardly drag him along.

One day he met a pair of Ducks and told them all his trouble.

"We can help you to see the world," said the Ducks. "Take hold of this stick with your teeth and we will carry you far up in the air where you can see the whole countryside. But keep quiet or you will be sorry."

The Tortoise was very glad indeed. He seized the stick firmly with his teeth, the two Ducks took hold of it one at each end, and away they sailed up toward the clouds.


[Illustration]

Just then a Crow flew by. He was very much astonished at the strange sight and cried:

"This must surely be the King of Tortoises!"

"Why certainly—" began the Tortoise.

But as he opened his mouth to say these foolish words he lost his hold on the stick, and down he fell to the ground, where he was dashed to pieces on a rock.

Foolish curiosity and vanity often lead to misfortune.