First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for May

Jack and Jill



King Arthur



Lavender's Blue



Ye Frog and Ye Crow

Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer, quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.


I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,

Or hear the grown-up people's feet

Still going past me in the street.


And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?

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Week 12 Animal Language from The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting John Stark and the Indians from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston The Tadpole Who Wanted To Be Grown-Up from Among the Pond People by Clara Dillingham Pierson The Seven Ravens from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Up the Stairs by Lisa M. Ripperton Hiram, King of Tyre from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge New Friends and Old (Part 2 of 2) from The Swiss Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins The Boy Who Became an Archer from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Georgina Rossetti 		Market Square by A. A. Milne
Spring's Waking by Isabel Eccelstone Mackay 		My Bed Is a Boat by Robert Louis Stevenson Sweet and Low by Alfred Lord Tennyson Mary Had a Little Lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale Daffadowndilly 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.