Literature Connections: Fairy Tales part 2

One of my favorite big & small stories is Jack & the Beanstalk. Can't get much more of an obvious size difference that this one!

To start, I needed a giant, a Jack and a beanstalk!  KidsSoup has a set of characters; this giant is from there.  My beanstalk is simply a laminated piece of construction paper that I drew a squiggle on, then cut after it was laminated.  I have one part as a hook to keep it on my flannel board or white board.  There is magnet tape on the back of this set - my white board on wheels was the perfect size to drape the beanstalk down, but since I am at home I had to use the flannel board to show you.

The Jack came from a curriculum book I photocopied from the library.  If I can find the title I will edit the post.

Using the patterns from KidsSoup, we would tell and retell the story, and talk about the difference in sizes of big and small things.  This is a repetition of the other big and small lessons, just with a different story.

The science connection made it an essential fairy tale to use.  We planted some seeds (after comparing their sizes) and tracked their growth.  I just brought in some leftover seeds from home; we planted a couple of each, This does take some time, I admit, to allow for growth but it's fun and by the time the plants are tall enough to measure with a ruler, we've moved onto standard measurement, so I look at this lesson as prep for that one!

I know that standard measurement is NOT part of the Kindergarten Common Core Standards; I see it is not really brought in until 2nd grade now. But this is something I can't ignore when the kids are totally capable of reading a ruler. 

Hands on activity for this fairy tale: walk outside to compare GIANT to BIG to SMALL.  We talked about the difference between something that can be called giant versus something we would call big.  It is so important for young students to understand the language of math.  Great opportunity to introduce TINY as well.

Now, these are all lessons I did with my three and four year olds, minus the measuring the plants with a ruler.  They would use non-standard items like cubes.  The CCS are so easy for measurement that this would be doable with your Kindergarten classes and be aligned perfectly.

Art connection: my youngest students got their own Jack and beanstalk, and practiced cutting on the lines.  They "grew" their beanstalk by picking up the center piece (and bounced it up and down a few times) then I would tape it hanging to the wall, cabinet or table (to spread them out) and they got to move their Jack up and down the beanstalk.  Our positional vocabulary of UP, DOWN, TOP, and BOTTOM was reinforced during this time. 

Next time, yet another fairy tale!!

Kathy