Garden (part 5) and Fairy Tales :)

Oh my gosh I forgot how busy April is! We started our fairy tale unit this week and I am LOVING it. We had more garden stuff to do and it worked out great because I had planned on starting off with Jack and the Beanstalk for our Fairy Tale unit. So! We started out by talking about Fairy Tales. I found a cute fairy tale chart online and I've been looking all over but I can't find the original website, so if you know where it came from please let me know! I'll put a picture up soon but basically it's a castle poster that says
 "What is a Fairy Tale?"
"A Fairy Tale is a make-believe story that has...
-good characters
-bad characters
-magic
-a special beginning
-a special ending
-love
-talking animals

We talked about what a "character" is and then jumped into reading Jack and the Beanstalk. The kids were super excited to point out things from our list that they noticed in the story. At the end of the story I went to put the book back on the shelf and we saw that the Giant had left us a note!

Then we found a bunch of his footprints that he had left behind. Each kid got a footprint and a recording sheet then they went to work looking for things that were longer, shorter, and the same length as his footprints.

Note to self: Make the footprint MUCH bigger next time! I had some sneaky kids come up to measure my foot and one of them said "Hey, the giant's foot is the same size as yours!" oops.

The next day we read another version of Jack and the Beanstalk. The kids started comparing the second version to the first one we read without any prompting! I have a bunch of smarties :)
Then I gave the kids some "magic beans" to plant! We asked the parents to donate 2 liter bottles. I cut them in half (almost) but left about an inch still connected. This keeps the top half from falling off over and over again. Then they planted their magic beans and decorated a label for their bottle.

I printed off these cute covers for their bean journals. Thank you to Christie at First Grade Fever for the journal covers!

The next day we talked about the beginning, middle and end of stories. I gave each kid a picture of a weiner dog that I drew. Then I told them part of one of the fairy tales we had read (we've been reading lots of fairy tales in addition to Jack and the Beanstalk) and they had to point to the beginning (the face), the middle (the tummy) or the end (the tail) of the weiner dog depending on which part of the story they thought I was describing. It was a fun way to assess the kids understanding of story parts. (This was also my spring observation day and my principal loved the activity!) After we finished with the weiner dogs the kids made their own leaves for our classroom beanstalk. Thanks to Brooke at Primary Perspective for the awesome idea! The kids wrote out their favorite part of the story then illustrated it on the back of the leaf. Here's how ours turned out.

Our hallway is TOTALLY covered with projects and work the kids have done. Next up: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Princess and the Frog and the Three Little Pigs. More to come tomorrow! Have a WONDERFUL week friends :)