First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for April

If All the World Were Paper



The Little Cock Sparrow



Ye Song of Sixpence



My Lady's Garden

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Twinkle, twinkle, little star;

How I wonder what you are!

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky!


When the blazing sun is set,

And the grass with dew is wet,

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.


In the dark blue sky you keep,

And often through my curtains peep,

For you never shut your eye

Till the sun is in the sky.


Then if I were in the dark,

I would thank you for your spark;

I could not see which way to go,

If you did not twinkle so.

  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 Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

A Town Mouse once visited a relative who lived in the country. For lunch the Country Mouse served wheat stalks, roots, and acorns, with a dash of cold water for drink. The Town Mouse ate very sparingly, nibbling a little of this and a little of that, and by her manner making it very plain that she ate the simple food only to be polite.


[Illustration]

After the meal the friends had a long talk, or rather the Town Mouse talked about her life in the city while the Country Mouse listened. They then went to bed in a cozy nest in the hedgerow and slept in quiet and comfort until morning. In her sleep the Country Mouse dreamed she was a Town Mouse with all the luxuries and delights of city life that her friend had described for her. So the next day when the Town Mouse asked the Country Mouse to go home with her to the city, she gladly said yes.

When they reached the mansion in which the Town Mouse lived, they found on the table in the dining room the leavings of a very fine banquet. There were sweetmeats and jellies, pastries, delicious cheeses, indeed, the most tempting foods that a Mouse can imagine. But just as the Country Mouse was about to nibble a dainty bit of pastry, she heard a Cat mew loudly and scratch at the door. In great fear the Mice scurried to a hiding place, where they lay quite still for a long time, hardly daring to breathe. When at last they ventured back to the feast, the door opened suddenly and in came the servants to clear the table, followed by the House Dog.


[Illustration]

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

The Country Mouse stopped in the Town Mouse's den only long enough to pick up her carpet bag and umbrella.

"You may have luxuries and dainties that I have not," she said as she hurried away, "but I prefer my plain food and simple life in the country with the peace and security that go with it."

Poverty with security is better than plenty in the midst of fear and uncertainty.