Popping Corn

Independent Reading. Read the poem below. Read aloud then answer the questions that follow.

1. One autumn night, when the wind was high,
     And the rain fell in heavy plashes,
   A little boy sat by the kitchen fire,
     A-popping corn in the ashes;
   And his sister, a curly-haired child of three,
   Sat looking on, just close to his knee.

2. Pop! pop! and the kernels, one by one,
     Came out of the embers flying;
   The boy held a long pine stick in his hand,
     And kept it busily plying;
   He stirred the corn and it snapped the more,
   And faster jumped to the clean-swept floor.

3. Part of the kernels flew one way,
     And a part hopped out the other;
   Some flew plump into the sister’s lap,
     Some under the stool of the brother;
   The little girl gathered them into a heap,
   And called them a flock of milk-white sheep.