Jack and the Beanstalk Reading Activities

The kids really enjoyed reading different versions of Jack an the Beanstalk last week. We did a couple of easy reading activities to go along with the books.

Story Retelling

To practice retelling the details of the original story we used this wonderful printable set and the Jack and the Beanstalk craft I described in the math activities post. The kids had a lot of fun acting out the story with these props.

FIND ALL OF OUR JACK AND THE BEANSTALK ACTIVITIES IN OUR PRINTABLE LESSON PLANS.

Alphabet Practice

Watching the Super Why!: Jack and the Beanstalk episode inspired this idea for a quick and easy hands-on alphabet activity. I had some left over leaves from silk flowers that I took apart for another activity (sometimes it helps that I tend to save everything!). I quickly wrote one letter on each leaf and cut a green strip of paper. The kids had fun naming the letters and putting them in alphabetical order to help Jack climb the beanstalk.

Phonemic Awareness-Syllables Activities

Since beanstalk is a compound word, I thought it would be a great week to do some syllable activities with the kids. We also read Waynetta and the Cornstalk: A Texas Fairy Tale, so this gave us more compound words to work with (cornstalk and cowgirl).

I like to use manipulatives when introducing phonemic awareness activities. It helps make the concept more concrete for the kids. This week we used our Megabloks.

First we each started with two blocks, one for each word in the compound word. I named the first block “bean” as I pointed to it. Then I named the second block “stalk” as I pointed. The kids did the same.

Then I said, “If we put these words together, we get a new word.” Putting the “bean” block on top of the “stalk” block I said, “beanstalk.” The kids did the same. Then I asked them to touch each block and say the individual words one more time.

Next I said, “Let’s take away bean. What do we have left?” The kids took off the top block and said, “Stalk.”

I gave them a new block (a different color) and said, “This block is the word corn. What do we get if we add corn to the beginning of stalk?” They added the new block and responded, “Cornstalk.”

We did the same series of activities with the word cowgirl. Then we changed the second syllable to “boy.”

We haven’t done much work with manipulating syllables yet, so I was pleasantly surprised by how well they caught on using the MegaBloks. When we were done, we put down the blocks and followed the same sequence with only the oral directions, and they did very well identifying the individual syllables and changing them again.

What reading activities do you do to go along with Jack and the Beanstalk?

And of course we tied in some Jack and the Beanstalk math activities along the way. Here’s a quick glimpse.

GET A FULL WEEK OF JACK & THE BEANSTALK THEME LEARNING AND PLAY

Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.

This set includes active hands-on learning ideas and the following printables:

1) My Beanstalk science activity

2) Jack and the Beanstalk Shape Building Mats (in color and b/w)

3) Climb the Beanstalk Alphabet Game (4 versions in color and b/w)

4) The Giant’s Gold class book covers (in color and b/w) and page template

5) Hen and Eggs Beginning Sound Sort

6) Jack and the Beanstalk vocabulary cards (in color and b/w)

7) I Found Magic Beans counting activity and recording sheet (in color and b/w)

8) Climbing the Beanstalk counting and number sequencing activity

9) Shake, Drop, Add Math Game with game mat (in color and b/w) and recording sheet

GET YOUR LESSON PLANS

Jack and the Beanstalk Theme Lesson Plans

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