First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for May

Jack and Jill



King Arthur



Lavender's Blue



Ye Frog and Ye Crow

The Land of Nod

From breakfast on through all the day

At home among my friends I stay,

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the land of Nod.


All by myself I have to go,

With none to tell me what to do—

All alone beside the streams

And up the mountain-sides of dreams.


The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the land of Nod.


Try as I like to find the way,

I never can get back by day,

Nor can remember plain and clear

The curious music that I hear.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 33 The Cowardly Lion from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum How Audubon Came To Know about Birds from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston The Twin Lambs from Among the Farmyard People by Clara Dillingham Pierson The Little Brother and Sister from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Around the Fire by Lisa M. Ripperton Retreat of the Ten Thousand from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge Sunday from The Irish Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins How Aaron Made a Golden Calf and What Became of It from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Little Brown Bobby by Laura E. Richards 		Little Bo-Peep and Little Boy Blue by A. A. Milne
Rockaby, Lullaby by Josiah Gilbert Holland 		The Gardener by Robert Louis Stevenson The Dandelion, Anonymous Where Go the Boats? by Robert Louis Stevenson Lie A-Bed by Christina Georgina Rossetti
First row Previous row          Next row Last row
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.