First Grade Read Aloud Banquet



Songs for February

Hot Cross Buns



Natural History



Pussy Cat



Warm Hands




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 6 My Father Meets a Rhinoceros from My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett The Story of a Wise Woman from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston Why the Sheep Ran Away from Among the Farmyard People by Clara Dillingham Pierson Tom Thumb from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Up the Stairs by Lisa M. Ripperton In a Strange Land from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge The Lonely Herdsman (Part 1 of 2) from The Swiss Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins The Great Ship That Saved Eight People from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Precocious Piggy by Thomas Hood
Twinkletoes by A. A. Milne
The Rock-a-By Lady by Eugene Field
Happy Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson The Snow-Bird by Frank Dempster Sherman Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star by Jane Taylor Can't 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.