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






The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh! I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!


Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside—


Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!


  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
First row Previous row          Next row Last row
The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Lion and the Mouse

A Lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little Mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the Lion's nose. Roused from his nap, the Lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her.

"Spare me!" begged the poor Mouse. "Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you."

The Lion was much amused to think that a Mouse could ever help him. But he was generous and finally let the Mouse go.

Some days later, while stalking his prey in the forest, the Lion was caught in the toils of a hunter's net. Unable to free himself, he filled the forest with his angry roaring. The Mouse knew the voice and quickly found the Lion struggling in the net. Running to one of the great ropes that bound him, she gnawed it until it parted, and soon the Lion was free.


[Illustration]

"You laughed when I said I would repay you," said the Mouse. "Now you see that even a Mouse can help a Lion."

A kindness is never wasted.