Jack and the Beanstalk

Ms. Stacey
Jan 20
2 min read

One of my favorite fairytales is Jack and the Beanstalk. We read several versions of the book during our daily Circle Time throughout the week. This allowed the children to compare and contrast (a math skill!) the different stories. For example in one version there who lays golden eggs, and in another version, it’s a goose that lays the golden eggs. In one version, the person who receives Jack at the castle is the Giants wife in another version. It’s his Cook little changes like this show how much the children are paying attention and how much they are retaining during story time. I like to chart the differences.

At outside time I encouraged the children to reenact the story.

Some of my favorite quotes were, “It’s my turn to be the fe-fi-fo-fum!” “When it’s my turn to be Jack, I’m keeping the cow!” “I smell English blood!” and

“Go get a plastic knife to cut the beanstalk! I’m not allowed to have an ax!”

For the sensory bin…. dried beans of course! Include several varieties and a few measuring cups, spoons, funnels, tongs and anything else you think might be fun. Please be aware of your age of children and of the choking risk beans pose.

For science we did a celery osmosis experiment

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8fuGdfs/

At music I brought out my autoharp and had the children take turns with our “magic harp” from the story.

During Free Choice I had the Preschool Teacher dream come true: the children used materials from around the room to recreate the story. When the story comes to life for the children, I really do feel like I must be doing something correctly.

They assigned roles to each other, agreed on which items would work for which pieces of the story i.e. unifix cubes from the math center became the beanstalk, cotton balls from the art center became the clouds, and the biggest doll was of course the giant. They re-enacted the story repeatedly trading out the roles and taking turns. The language was rich and complex. Social skills were abundant. Observing my students so engaged and cooperative was a fairytale come true for me!