Arjun's kite festival: warm-up · Grade 4

The passage and its 4 questions

Directions: Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions in full sentences.

• On the morning of the kite festival, the sky over the city was a giant blue playground.
• From every rooftop, kites bobbed and darted like a flock of paper birds, and the air buzzed with laughter and the snap of string.
• Arjun stood on his grandmother's roof, holding the kite they had built together. It was red and gold, with a long tail that rippled like a ribbon of fire. His stomach was full of butterflies. He had practiced for weeks, but he had never flown a kite in the festival before.
• "Remember," said Dadi, his grandmother, "the wind is a friend, not a horse. You do not pull it. You listen to it."
• Arjun let out the string. Whoosh! The kite leaped upward, then dipped and spun toward the neighbor's water tank. Arjun's heart skipped a beat. But he waited, the way Dadi had taught him, and felt the breeze tug gently at his fingers. Slowly, he let out more string, and the kite climbed higher and higher until it was a tiny red spark against the clouds.
• By evening, Arjun's arms ached, and he was so tired he could have slept for a hundred years. The setting sun painted the sky orange, and families lit lanterns on their rooftops.
• His kite had not won a prize, but as Dadi squeezed his hand, Arjun felt as light as a feather.
• 1. Who helped Arjun build his kite?
• 2. Find a simile in paragraph 1. What two things does it compare?
• 3. 'His stomach was full of butterflies' is an idiom. How was Arjun feeling?
• 4. Connect the passage to something you have read or seen before.