After all of our learning about changing and growing before the Easter holiday, the children are excited to return to school to see how our seeds have grown. This term we explore lots of stories starting with Jasper's Beanstalk.

We learn to retell stories using story language and join in with phrases and repeated language. We learn that stories have a beginning, middle and end. 

The children listen to the story of 'Jasper's Beanstalk'. Jasper plants his bean and shows the children how to look after their bean every day of the week! They need water and sunshine just like the seeds we planted. We plant beans and vegetables just like Jasper and are excited to write labels for the plants. The children sequence the pictures to show what happens in the story. 

Next we read the story of  'Jack and the Beanstalk'. We learn about traditional stories and how in other books the characters and main event are the same, but the words and pictures might be a little different.  We have lots of fun joing in with 'Fee, Fi, Fo Fum!'. We act out the story to help us to re-tell it with props and puppets. 

We use different media to create our own beanstalk which grows taller and taller until a giant appears at the top. When we find his footprints in Nursery the next day, it is really magical!

Then we explore the 'Enormous Turnip' and ''The Gingerbread Man'. We have so much fun saying words like 'Run, run as fast as you can you can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man'. We have fun acting out the story pretending to be different characters using masks and making story maps.

Finally, we have lots of fun reading Goldilocks together! Did you know that Goldilocks comes to visit the Nursery? We have to watch her carefully so that she looks after our furniture, doesn't eat all our porridge and snacks and stays wide awake! 

By the end of the term we have learnt to retell stories using story language and to join in with phrases and repeated language from the stories we have shared. We learn that stories have a beginning, middle and end.