Jasper: Jasper's Beanstalk

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The book has clear illustrations which will allow readers to use picture cues to help them read the text. 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. 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.

It is also a nice way to get the children talking about the book and extend their thinking by asking questions such as: What happens to the beanstalk? Does Jasper climb up it? If so, where does he go? The story is about Jasper the cat, who finds a bean on Monday, plants it on Tuesday and continues 'looking after it' until the following Monday when he digs it up believing it will never grow. of course the bean does grow (after a long, long, long time) showing that if Jasper had just been more patient he would have grown the beanstalk himself. 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. A cute story of Jasper who has a bean and plants it to watch a beanstalk grow. He gets upset after a week of caring for his little bean and still nothing happens. He tosses it aside and forgets, but eventually the bean sprouts in the beanstalk Jasper was hoping for. 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.Jasper thinks that the bean will never grow into a beanstalk, but a long time later he is surprised… 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. Language and Literacy - recall and sequence the story with the children. You could provide the children with story props and then encourage them to act out the story individually or with others. 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! Share Oliver’s Vegetables. Identify and enjoy the humour. Discuss why Oliver didn’t spot the potatoes instantly. Find each vegetable and recognise which part Oliver ate, e.g. cabbage = leaf.

Jasper wants to plant his own bean; the story goes through the different days of the week, showing what happens to Jasper's bean each day. He gets sad because his bean won’t grow. But then all of a sudden it grows into a large giant beanstalk and he gets excited he is sure there is a giant at the top! 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.The story starts on a Monday where Jasper plants a bean and then every day of the week he tends to it to help it grow by watering it, digging it and spraying it. Unfortunately a week later, after waiting, waiting and waiting, Jasper gets very frustrated and impatient as nothing has grown. He decides he has had enough and digs the bean out and throws it away. However some time later the bean begins to grow and it grows into a huge beanstalk. Jasper is convinced there are giants at the top and goes in search of them. 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!

The illustrations are charming and simple, but with enough going on to draw interest and support questioning of the book. 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.This book is very simple but yet extremely effective to introduce the plant cycle to children. For this reason, I believe that it is more for KS1 children. Enjoy Jasper’s Beanstalk. Appreciate humour. Reread the story together, modelling how to use different strategies to read unfamiliar words ( resources). Identify what Jasper did on each day. Discuss the consequences of Jasper mowing the bean. List equipment used/ what he did with it to care for the bean.