Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for April

Alone

A very old woman
Lives in yon house.
The squeak of the cricket,
The stir of the mouse,
Are all she knows
Of the earth and us.

Once she was young,
Would dance and play,
Like many another
Young popinjay;
And run to her mother
At dusk of day.

And colours bright
She delighted in;
The fiddle to hear,
And to lift her chin,
And sing as small
As a twittering wren.

But age apace
Comes at last to all;
And a lone house filled
With the cricket's call;
And the scampering mouse
In the hollow wall.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Week 29	The Fairy Promises To Make Pinocchio a Boy from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi	Julius Cæsar from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin	Some Feathered Diggers from The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess	The Hen-wife's Son and the Princess Bright Brow (Part 3 of 3) from The Boy Who Knew What the Birds Said by Padraic Colum	The Story of Marco Polo from The Discovery of New Worlds by M. B. Synge	"Understood Aunt Frances" (Part 3 of 4) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher	The Shepherd Boy of Bethlehem from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
	We Who Were Left Behind from Richard of Jamestown by James Otis Baking Bread without Ovens from Richard of Jamestown by James Otis An Unequal Division of Labor from Richard of Jamestown by James Otis	A Stem with Three Sides from Outdoor Visits by Edith M. Patch	The Rat and the Elephant from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter	I Am Alarmed by a Voice from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin	Poor Old Good from Nursery Tales from Many Lands by Eleanor L. and Ada M. Skinner	Sammy Jay Learns Peter Rabbit's Secret from The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum by Thornton Burgess	Trouble from The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
	To the Ladybird by Caroline Bowles Southey	America by Samuel Francis Smith		Four-Leaf Clover by Ella Higginson	Nicholas Nye by Walter de la Mare	The Lost Doll by Charles Kingsley	The Brook Song by James Whitcomb Riley

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.