Jack and the Beanstalk

This fun activity involves the students in sorting, counting, exploring adding,  and writing numbers!

First we looked at the beans we had.  There were so many different types of beans!  We thought that each bean stalk should grow from the same type of beans, so we had to sort the beans into different varieties. 

Then we decided that each beanstalk should have three beans to grow from just like Jack's!  So we counted our beans into groups of three.

Some of us wanted to grow more than one beanstalk (more chances of finding the giant's castle) so we counted out several groups of three.

The color of the beanstalk presented some difficulty as we thought we should really have green, but we only have red, blue, and yellow paint in our classroom.  We explored with the colors we had and discovered we could create green by mixing blue and yellow!

We glued our beans to the bottom of the manila tag in groups of three beans of the same type.  When the glue dried we "grew" our beanstalks from each group of three beans.

Finally, we wrote the number of beans we needed to use to grow our beanstalks.  Some of us were very surprised at the number of beans needed when we added the beans together.  To make five beanstalks we needed 15 beans.  That's a lot!

This was a fun activity for the students.  They enjoyed solving the problems we came across (how many beans for each stalk, can we have more than one stalk, do the beans have to be the same type, how do we get green).  Being a part of the decision making process for their activity certainly made it more meaningful for them!

• "Jack and the Beanstalk"
• manila tag paper
• a variety of beans
• glue
• green paint (or blue and yellow)
• pencils

"One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three.  How many was that?"

"Wooa, 15!  I need fifteen beans to make five beanstalks!"

"Hey, I need three and three, that's six."