First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for December

I Saw Three Ships



The Mulberry Bush



The North Wind and the Robin



Dance a Baby

Five Eyes

In Hans' old Mill his three black cats

Watch the bins for the thieving rats.

Whisker and claw, they crouch in the night,

Their five eyes smouldering green and bright:

Squeaks from the flour sacks, squeaks from where

The cold wind stirs on the empty stair,

Squeaking and scampering, everywhere.

Then down they pounce, now in, now out,

At whisking tail, and sniffing snout;

While lean old Hans he snores away

Till peep of light at break of day;

Then up he climbs to his creaking mill,

Out come his cats all grey with meal—

Jekkel, and Jessup, and one-eyed Jill.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 19 The Rarest Animal of All from The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting Washington's Last Battle from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston The Eels' Moving Night from Among the Pond People by Clara Dillingham Pierson The Pied Piper from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Around the Fire by Lisa M. Ripperton The Dawn of History from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge The Rooster at the Harvest Festival from The Filipino Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins The Rich Man's Son Who Was Sold as a Slave from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Little Cock-Sparrow, Anonymous Politeness by A. A. Milne
Baby Seed Song by Edith Nesbit
A Good Boy by Robert Louis Stevenson 		Pippa's Song by Robert Browning Autumn Fires by Robert Louis Stevenson Delight by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Ass and the Load of Salt

A Merchant, driving his Ass homeward from the seashore with a heavy load of salt, came to a river crossed by a shallow ford. They had crossed this river many times before without accident, but this time the Ass slipped and fell when halfway over. And when the Merchant at last got him to his feet, much of the salt had melted away. Delighted to find how much lighter his burden had become, the Ass finished the journey very gayly.

Next day the Merchant went for another load of salt. On the way home the Ass, remembering what had happened at the ford, purposely let himself fall into the water, and again got rid of most of his burden.

The angry Merchant immediately turned about and drove the Ass back to the seashore, where he loaded him with two great baskets of sponges. At the ford the Ass again tumbled over; but when he had scrambled to his feet, it was a very disconsolate Ass that dragged himself homeward under a load ten times heavier than before.

The same measures will not suit all circumstances.


[Illustration]

The Ass and the Load of Salt