Jack & the Beanstalk Activities and a FREEBIE

We are in our final week of our How the World Works unit and this week our story from Reading Street is Jack & the Beanstalk. It's such a fun week to explore plants, wrap up our investigations on life cycles, and explore some make-believe fiction! 

Sprouting a Lima bean: 
It seems like a strange time of the year to be doing this but who could resist sprouting a bean stalk while reading Jack & the Beanstalk? And they are so easy to do! Here is a quick overview: 

1. Soak your lima beans overnight the night before you want to use them. 
2. Have students wet a paper towel and place the bean on the paper towel. 
3. Place the paper towel in a plastic bag. 
4. Hang in the window. 

You can add these cute Jack & the Beanstalk castles to display them in the window. This is available in this Jack & the Beanstalk unit.  To prepare the beans is pretty easy so this adds a little to the lesson by having them color the castle, cut out the door, and add it to the bag. 

Another great resource I found is this YouTube video of a bean sprouting. It's really cool! 

Parts of a Plant: 
To finish up our life cycle unit we are giving a summative assessment this week about the parts of a plant. I will use this to add to their portfolio. I am still searching for a great summative that would include more choice on the student's part. This will close out the unit nicely though. 

This is the freebie file! Download it HERE.

Science: 
If sprouting Lima beans wasn't enough for science we are starting our FOSS kit "Trees". This will involve some nature "hikes" to the playground this week to check out the changing trees in our area and make some observations about what happens to trees in the winter. We have some nice pine trees right outside our playground fence that will make a good topic for discussion and a little compare/contrast with the trees out front that are in the middle of losing their leaves. (yes...our trees still have leaves on them!) 

Literacy Centers: 
We have so many options this week for centers!  

The letter of the week this week in this Reading Street unit is the letter Ii (for the second week). We will continue to work on not only the initial sound /i/ but also the medial sound /i/. 

Here are a few of the options in the unit. 

Upper/lowercase Letter Sort

Upper/lowercase letter search. 

This is new this week and will be their first
time with a word search.

Write the room includes a spot to draw a picture of yourself
with one of the words on the wall. This week focus on middle /i/ words.

Rhyme Time includes a rhyming sheet. Students use bingo chips to match up rhyming words then they complete the cut and glue.  

We also have a fun listening station available with a response sheet about reality vs. make-believe. And of course all of our small groups happening this week with a full rotation finally in place. These centers keep them engaged for about 15 minutes while I make my way through groups. We are 12 weeks into school and I can finally say it's working just the way I want it to! Perfection takes time (wink, wink).

Jack & the Beanstalk is one of my favorite weeks with Reading Street so I am looking forward to all of the activities we have planned. Do you have any special activities you do with this book? I'd love to hear from you! 

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