First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for October

Girls and Boys



Looby Light



St. Paul's Steeple



Ye Jolly Miller

Some One

Some one came knocking

At my wee, small door;

Some one came knocking,

I'm sure—sure—sure;

I listened, I opened,

I looked to left and right,

But naught there was a-stirring

In the still dark night;

Only the busy beetle

Tap-tapping in the wall,

Only from the forest

The screech-owl's call,

Only the cricket whistling

While the dewdrops fall,

So I know not who came knocking,

At all, at all, at all.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 9 My Father Makes a Bridge from My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett Franklin Asks the Sunshine Something from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston The Young Minnow Who Would Not Eat When He Should from Among the Pond People by Clara Dillingham Pierson Little Red Riding Hood from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Around the Fire by Lisa M. Ripperton The First Merchant Fleet from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge The Pass (Part 2 of 3) from The Swiss Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins How Abram's Choice Brought Blessing from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Daffy-Down-Dilly, Anonymous 		Brownie by A. A. Milne
The Little Elf-Man by John Kendrick Bangs 		The Wind by Robert Louis Stevenson Cradle Song, Anonymous Goodnight, Little People by Thomas Hood The Caterpillar 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.