Jasper: Jasper's Beanstalk

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Read The Tiny Seed. Remind children it shows the lifecycle of a seed. Identify what stops some seeds from growing, e.g. sun too hot, ice too cold, ocean too wet. List ideas & consider alternatives. Jasper's beanstalk probably has around 100 words in it, but manages to cover lots with them - days of the week, growth cycle of a plant, gardening vocabulary and techniques (some incorrectly used!) and the virtue of patience! Jasper thinks that the bean will never grow into a beanstalk, but a long time later he is surprised…

Jaspers Beanstalk is not to be confused by its similar book title! This book is great if children are learning the days of the week. On Monday Jasper plants a seed and the story progresses as the days go past. Will the bean grow? The book is an excellent example for building simple sentences and asking the children to write out what happens each day. A selection of cards featuring our interpretation of characters and scenes from the Jasper’s Beanstalk story. They are ideal to cut out and use to retell the story or sequence the story with your pupils. Jasper’s Beanstalk is a great story to introduce the concept of planting and growing to children in the EYFS. I enjoyed reading this short and simple story to a reception class on the second placement. I read the book as a way of introducing the topic of planting and growing to the class, in the lesson the children went on to growing their own seeds, just like Jasper.Read Oliver’s Fruit Salad. Notice that at the start Oliver didn’t want to eat the fruit. Discuss why he changed his mind. Finally, list lots of different fruits and describe them, e.g. red cherry.

Display Contents from Seed to Sunflower and model using the book to answer questions about the life cycle of a sunflower. Write a response to each question.The story touches on the topic of the cycles of nature and how things grow, with a gentle moral of how everything comes to those who wait. This book was the topic of the week in reception. We planted some cress, learnt about seeds and growing vegetables in the garden. To link to literacy each child created a flip book about the days of the week following Jaspers journey from planting the seed and finishing with the seed growing. It's about a cat called Jasper who plants a bean in the attempt to grow a beanstalk. He give it all the things it needs to grow but nothing happens. Eventually, the beanstalk grows and grows and he is so amazed. It ends with Jasper trying to climb it to find a giant.

Share the poem and rehearse at suitable times throughout the week, e.g. start/end of the day. Help children vary the pitch and tone of their voice as they rehearse to stress the counting words. Hold up fingers to correspond to each number and generate an action, e.g. munch = snap mouth shut. This is a wonderful story for children in the EYFS. The story goes like this, on Monday Jasper plants a bean and every day of the week he tends to it to help it grow. A week later, after waiting, waiting and waiting, Jasper gets very frustrated and impatient as nothing has grown. He decides to pull the bean out and throws it away. A long, long, long time later, the bean grows into a lovely beanstalk. Jasper is glad and begins to look for giants.

Jasper's Beanstalk introduces readers to the character of a cat named Jasper who is determined to grow a beanstalk. He plants a bean and carefully tends to it each day, expecting the beanstalk to grow tall within a week. Much to his dismay the beanstalk does not grow. Finally, he gets fed up of waiting for it to grow and digs up the bean and throws it away. You can probably imagine what happens next!