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. 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. 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.

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.

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. Jasper thinks that the bean will never grow into a beanstalk, but a long time later he is surprised…

The illustrations are charming and simple, but with enough going on to draw interest and support questioning of the book.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! 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.