Jack and the Beanstalk
Combining activities and food with our kids favorite stories, is a great way to experience them together. At Super Healthy Kids, our focus is on making fruits and vegetables simple, fun and delicious, so we decided to create an activity and snack based on the fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk! What a great way to make green beans come to life for kids.
Step 1) Read the story
The story of Jack and the Beanstalk starts off with a hungry family whose cow stopped giving them milk. When Jack went to sell the cow, he was offered some magic beans instead of money. He accepted the trade, and brought the beans home. The mother was mad, and threw the beans onto the ground and Jack went to bed. That night, the beanstalk grew up into the sky.
Step 2) Plant your own green beans
What a marvelous lesson this is about planting seeds or beans. Seeds truly are magical. Although when planted, they don’t grow overnight, they do get so much bigger and taller than their original size.
You can start this in a pot in the window sill, or if it is spring or summer, use and outdoor spot for your beans.
Observe the seeds with your kids. Notice the hard shell. Set some aside so the kids can compare the seeds to the plant after it’s sprouted.
Push the seeds just below the surface of the soil, and keep it watered.
Step 3) Eat the harvest
Another reason beans are magical is because they also grow children! We call veggies in our house, our “growing food”. Green beans in particular are a good source of calcium, vitamin B1 , potassium, and even protein.
One way we like to eat green beans is like French Fries. Add a little breading to the green beans and bake them. This way we can eat them with our fingers.
Green Bean Sticks
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1 egg
- 1/2 lb of green beans
Mix the buttermilk with the egg, and soaked the green beans in the mixture for about 10 minutes in the fridge (hoping for a little extra sticking power). Arrange the green beans on a pan, lined with foil and sprayed with cooking spray (foil not necessary). Sprinkle the beans with salt and panko crumbs. Place in oven at 400 degrees for about 10-15 minutes, or until panko starts to get golden brown.
What a fun way to make this story come to life!
For more ideas on making fruits and vegetables fun, simple, and delicious for kids, visit Super Healthy Kids!
Please check out our other activities as part of Fairy Tales Week.
Did you just steal Super Healthy Kids content and posted it as if it were yours? You know their logo is even in the pictures, right?? That’s not cool at all.
No, Amy from Super Healthy Kids wrote this post for us as a guest post and sent over the html code for us to post on our site. Which is why she put their logo on the pictures. As part of our summer series every week we have 3 guest bloggers posting on our site and all of their content is used with permission.