Jack and the Beanstalk Growing Topic

We started by listening to Jack and the Beanstalk from the BBC site. We listened three times then the children came up with the main characters and props from the story. They decided that they needed Jack, his Mum, a cow, a man that Jack meets, A beanstalk, a giant, a goose and a golden egg. To make it instantaneous for them I challenged them to find them from the resources we have in the lounge. We ended up with:

• Jack, his mum and the man were 'wow' people.
• The Giant was a 'Bob the Builder' character.
• A cow and a goose from the farm.
• A rubber egg from the play kitchen.
• A green ribbon from the craft box for the beanstalk.
• Some french beans for the magic beans and a net bag to hold them in.

The older children loved re-telling the story with the props and told it over and over again, changing roles and voices each time..... I made sure the little ones were included by asking them questions or getting them to 'grow' the ribbon beanstalk or chop it down or shout 'fe fi fo fum' when the giant arrived!

After that we went outside and planted our own 'magic beans'....

As a twist on the traditional method of a jar and blotting paper employed to observe bean germination, we cut kitchen cloth to fit a ziploc bag, then ran a loose running stitch across it to hold it in place.  After dampening the cloth we laid three beans in each bag and left in a warm bright place to watch what happens!

I'm planning to get the children to measure their beans with string as they grow by cutting the string to the length of the plant and then gluing it to card as a visual measuring tool. We could also count the number of leaves and graph those too.