First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for December

I Saw Three Ships



The Mulberry Bush



The North Wind and the Robin



Dance a Baby

My Shadow

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.


The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.


He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!


One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 21 Medicine and Magic from The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting Clark and His Men from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston The Lucky Mink from Among the Pond People by Clara Dillingham Pierson The Golden Goose from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Around the Fire by Lisa M. Ripperton The Rise of Carthage from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge Grannie Malone and the Twins from The Irish Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins From the Prison to the Palace from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
A Good Boy by Robert Louis Stevenson 		At the Zoo by A. A. Milne
Minnie and Mattie by Christina Georgina Rossetti 		Pirate Story by Robert Louis Stevenson The Shepherd by William Blake Over in the Meadow by Olive A. Wadsworth If All Were Rain by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Milkmaid and Her Pail

A Milkmaid had been out to milk the cows and was returning from the field with the shining milk pail balanced nicely on her head. As she walked along, her pretty head was busy with plans for the days to come.

"This good, rich milk," she reused, "will give me plenty of cream to churn. The butter I make I will take to market, and with the money I get for it I will buy a lot of eggs for hatching. How nice it will be when they are all hatched and the yard is full of fine young chicks. Then when May day comes I will sell them, and with the money I'll buy a lovely new dress to wear to the fair. All the young men will look at me. They will come and try to make love to me,—but I shall very quickly send them about their business!"

As she thought of how she would settle that matter, she tossed her head scornfully, and down fell the pail of milk to the ground. And all the milk flowed out, and with it vanished butter and eggs and chicks and new dress and all the milkmaid's pride.

Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.


[Illustration]