Jack and The Beanstalk

Our fairy tale adventure this week was "Jack and The Beanstalk!"

I do storytelling with this one, instead of reading from a book, and I bring in fun props to use with it (see photos).

What's so fun about this one is playing up the magical elements in the story. I tell the story, then we discuss, then we play with the story props... Then we plant our own "magic" beans (given to me by Jack himself)! My students are never quite sure if they should believe that my beans came from Jack... or that they're magic. Some of them get a little nervous about the idea of giant coming down their beanstalk, usually nervous enough that I assure them that there are no such thing as giants. So we brainstorm other things that we might find at the top of our beanstalks instead!

Some of my students were such believers in the beans' magic that they expected to see their beanstalk start growing before we had even finished with class. "Hey," I reminded them, "even Jack had to wait one night for his beanstalk to grow!"

I'm sure I'll be hearing about the progress of their beanstalks next week. I'm looking forward to it! In the meantime, I'll be cooking up my next magical story!