First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for March

Baa! Baa! Black Sheep



Cock Robin and Jenny Wren



Warm Hands



Polly Put the Kettle On

Spring

Sound the flute!

Now it's mute.

Birds delight,

Day and night.

Nightingale,

In the dale,

Lark in sky—

Merrily,

Merrily, merrily to welcome in the year.


Little boy,

Full of joy;

Little girl,

Sweet and small;

Cock does crow,

So do you;

Merry voice,

Infant noise;

Merrily, merrily to welcome in the year.


Little lamb,

Here I am;

Come and lick

My white neck;

Let me pull

Your soft wool;

Let me kiss

Your soft face;

Merrily, merrily we welcome in the year.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 12 Animal Language from The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting John Stark and the Indians from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston The Tadpole Who Wanted To Be Grown-Up from Among the Pond People by Clara Dillingham Pierson The Seven Ravens from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Up the Stairs by Lisa M. Ripperton Hiram, King of Tyre from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge New Friends and Old (Part 2 of 2) from The Swiss Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins The Boy Who Became an Archer from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Georgina Rossetti 		Market Square by A. A. Milne
Spring's Waking by Isabel Eccelstone Mackay 		My Bed Is a Boat by Robert Louis Stevenson Sweet and Low by Alfred Lord Tennyson Mary Had a Little Lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale Daffadowndilly by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

A Town Mouse once visited a relative who lived in the country. For lunch the Country Mouse served wheat stalks, roots, and acorns, with a dash of cold water for drink. The Town Mouse ate very sparingly, nibbling a little of this and a little of that, and by her manner making it very plain that she ate the simple food only to be polite.


[Illustration]

After the meal the friends had a long talk, or rather the Town Mouse talked about her life in the city while the Country Mouse listened. They then went to bed in a cozy nest in the hedgerow and slept in quiet and comfort until morning. In her sleep the Country Mouse dreamed she was a Town Mouse with all the luxuries and delights of city life that her friend had described for her. So the next day when the Town Mouse asked the Country Mouse to go home with her to the city, she gladly said yes.

When they reached the mansion in which the Town Mouse lived, they found on the table in the dining room the leavings of a very fine banquet. There were sweetmeats and jellies, pastries, delicious cheeses, indeed, the most tempting foods that a Mouse can imagine. But just as the Country Mouse was about to nibble a dainty bit of pastry, she heard a Cat mew loudly and scratch at the door. In great fear the Mice scurried to a hiding place, where they lay quite still for a long time, hardly daring to breathe. When at last they ventured back to the feast, the door opened suddenly and in came the servants to clear the table, followed by the House Dog.


[Illustration]

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

The Country Mouse stopped in the Town Mouse's den only long enough to pick up her carpet bag and umbrella.

"You may have luxuries and dainties that I have not," she said as she hurried away, "but I prefer my plain food and simple life in the country with the peace and security that go with it."

Poverty with security is better than plenty in the midst of fear and uncertainty.