First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for November

Aiken Drum



King Cole



The Old Man in Leather



Ye Fairy Ship

Alone

A very old woman

Lives in yon house.

The squeak of the cricket,

The stir of the mouse,

Are all she knows

Of the earth and us.


Once she was young,

Would dance and play,

Like many another

Young popinjay;

And run to her mother

At dusk of day.


And colours bright

She delighted in;

The fiddle to hear,

And to lift her chin,

And sing as small

As a twittering wren.


But age apace

Comes at last to all;

And a lone house filled

With the cricket's call;

And the scampering mouse

In the hollow wall.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 16 Polynesia and the King from The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting How Benny West Learned To Be a Painter from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston The Clever Water-Adder from Among the Pond People by Clara Dillingham Pierson Little Black Sambo from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Around the Fire by Lisa M. Ripperton The Story of the Argonauts from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge Fishing from The Filipino Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins How Jacob Stole His Brother's Blessing from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Lock the Dairy Door by Celia Thaxter 		Spring Morning by A. A. Milne
Seven Times One by Jean Ingelow 		The Moon by Robert Louis Stevenson Runaway Brook by Elizabeth Lee Follen He Who Would Thrive by Benjamin Franklin Fair To See by Christina Georgina Rossetti
First row Previous row          Next row Last row
The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Frogs Who Wished for a King

The Frogs were tired of governing themselves. They had so much freedom that it had spoiled them, and they did nothing but sit around croaking in a bored manner and wishing for a government that could entertain them with the pomp and display of royalty, and rule them in a way to make them know they were being ruled. No milk and water government for them, they declared. So they sent a petition to Jupiter asking for a king.

Jupiter saw what simple and foolish creatures they were, but to keep them quiet and make them think they had a king he threw down a huge log, which fell into the water with a great splash. The Frogs hid themselves among the reeds and grasses, thinking the new king to be some fearful giant. But they soon discovered how tame and peaceable King Log was. In a short time the younger Frogs were using him for a diving platform, while the older Frogs made him a meeting place, where they complained loudly to Jupiter about the government.

To teach the Frogs a lesson the ruler of the gods now sent a Crane to be king of Frogland. The Crane proved to be a very different sort of king from old King Log. He gobbled up the poor Frogs right and left and they soon saw what fools they had been. In mournful croaks they begged Jupiter to take away the cruel tyrant before they should all be destroyed.


[Illustration]

"How now!" cried Jupiter "Are you not yet content? You have what you asked for and so you have only yourselves to blame for your misfortunes."

Be sure you can better your condition before you seek to change.