Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for December


The Land of Story-Books

At evening when the lamp is lit,

Around the fire my parents sit;

They sit at home and talk and sing,

And do not play at anything.


Now, with my little gun, I crawl

All in the dark along the wall,

And follow round the forest track

Away behind the sofa back.


There, in the night, where none can spy,

All in my hunter's camp I lie,

And play at books that I have read

Till it is time to go to bed.


These are the hills, these are the woods,

These are my starry solitudes;

And there the river by whose brink

The roaring lions come to drink.


I see the others far away

As if in firelit camp they lay,

And I, like to an Indian scout,

Around their party prowled about.


So when my nurse comes in for me,

Home I return across the sea,

And go to bed with backward looks

At my dear land of Story-Books.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 7 Geppetto Gives Pinocchio His Breakfast from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi A Story of Robin Hood from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin The Thaw from The Seasons: Winter by Jane Marcet Crow-feather-Cloak Again (Part 2 of 2) from The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes by Padraic Colum The Roman World from The Discovery of New Worlds by M. B. Synge A Short Morning (Part 1 of 2) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher The Story of an Altar beside the River from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Harald's Battle from Viking Tales by Jennie Hall Tracks on the Snow from Outdoor Visits by Edith M. Patch The Eagle and the Jackdaw from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter I Find a Strange Lodging Place from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun from A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales by Margaret Evans Price Jimmy Skunk Calls on Prickly Porky from The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton Burgess The Captain Solomon Story from The Sandman: His Ship Stories by Willliam J. Hopkins
The World's Music by Gabriel Setoun The Sailors' Delight, Anonymous A Lobster Quadrille by Lewis Carroll The Watchman's Song, Anonymous The Cupboard by Walter de la Mare To a Child: Written in Her Album by William Wordsworth Naughty Claude by James Whitcomb Riley
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Frogs and the Ox

An Ox came down to a reedy pool to drink. As he splashed heavily into the water, he crushed a young Frog into the mud. The old Frog soon missed the little one and asked his brothers and sisters what had become of him.

"A great big  monster," said one of them, "stepped on little brother with one of his huge feet!"

"Big, was he!" said the old Frog, puffing herself up. "Was he as big as this?"


[Illustration]

"Oh, much  bigger!" they cried.

The Frog puffed up still more. "He could not have been bigger than this," she said. But the little Frogs all declared that the monster was much, much  bigger and the old Frog kept puffing herself out more and more until, all at once, she burst.

Do not attempt the impossible.