First Grade Read Aloud Banquet



Songs for December

I Saw Three Ships



The Mulberry Bush



The North Wind and the Robin



Dance a Baby




The Sugar-Plum Tree

Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?

'Tis a marvel of great renown!

It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop sea

In the garden of Shut-Eye Town;

The fruit that it bears is so wondrously sweet

(As those who have tasted it say)

That good little children have only to eat

Of that fruit to be happy next day.


When you've got to the tree, you would have a hard time

To capture the fruit which I sing;

The tree is so tall that no person could climb

To the boughs where the sugar-plums swing!

But up in that tree sits a chocolate cat,

And a gingerbread dog prowls below—

And this is the way you contrive to get at

Those sugar-plums tempting you so:


You say but the word to that gingerbread dog

And he barks with such terrible zest

That the chocolate cat is at once all agog,

As her swelling proportions attest.

And the chocolate cat goes cavorting around

From this leafy limb unto that,

And the sugar-plums tumble, of course, to the ground—

Hurrah for that chocolate cat!


There are marshmallows, gumdrops, and peppermint canes,

With stripings of scarlet or gold,

And you carry away of the treasure that rains

As much as your apron can hold!

So come, little child, cuddle closer to me

In your dainty white nightcap and gown,

And I'll rock you away to that Sugar-Plum Tree

In the garden of Shut-Eye Town.


  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 36 The Queen of the Field Mice from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum Some Boys Who Became Authors from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston Cradles from Seed-Babies by Margaret Warner Morley The Five Remarkable Brothers from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Around the Fire by Lisa M. Ripperton Coriolanus from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge Twenty Years After from The Irish Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins What Strong Drink Brought to Aaron's Sons from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Bow-Wow-Wow, Anonymous
The Invaders by A. A. Milne
Elf and Dormouse by Oliver Herford
Keepsake Mill by Robert Louis Stevenson Thank You, Pretty Cow by Jane Taylor Holding Hands by Lenore M. Link Fly Away by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Ants and the Grasshopper

One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat.

"What!" cried the Ants in surprise, "haven't you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?"

"I didn't have time to store up any food," whined the Grasshopper; "I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone."


[Illustration]

The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust.

"Making music, were you?" they cried. "Very well; now dance!" And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.

There's a time for work and a time for play.