Peanut Butter and Jelly Retell Literacy Center Activity

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Create your own Peanut Butter and Jelly retelling activity with this free download for kindergarten.

This is how I created a Peanut Butter and Jelly retell activity to go in our retell center as a storytelling option for my kindergarten students.

Let me show you what’s in our set and give you the materials to make it happen in your classroom too.

It’s one of my favorite literacy centers and we usually introduce the book Peanut Butter and Jelly by Nadine Westcott in the second week of school. We learn to retell this story in order and use it introduce the retell center.

This book helps me introduce the concept of stories with patterns and it’s a song book so it lends itself to clapping and snapping which helps keep kinders engaged.

Plus, when we retell it as a class on the last day of reading it together every student can hold a peanut or a few grapes since there are plenty of props.

I mean, really, the second week of school we aren’t quite ready to learn the lesson of “sometimes we don’t get a turn to participate.” {wink}

They get really excited to learn that they can “play” this retell game (as they like to think of it) when we’re done retelling as a class. They get pumped that they will get a turn to do it again at the retell center.

Later on, when everyone does not get a turn to hold a retell object (when we retell other stories as a class) it becomes part of an incentive that they can have a turn when they go to that literacy center.

What’s in my retell set

Here are the props I gathered rather inexpensively (and you can too) to bring the book alive once we knew it by heart.

I had an apron that I bought from the dollar store in my art cupboard and relocated it here permanently.

The plastic knife and fake peanut butter jar came from my home. I just made a label to tape onto the empty plastic nutella jar.

The grapes came from the dollar store too, I just plucked them off of the vine. The bread, peanuts and elephant were tools I already had in my classroom.

How to make your own Peanut Butter and Jelly retell activity

If you plan to make this a year-long literacy center, I highly recommend that you read the Retell Literacy Center Directions for more details and making everything run smooth.

Because you can make this kindergarten activity yourself and once you and your students are hooked on retelling you’ll want to make this a year-long thing.

Here are the materials you’ll need… (may include affiliate book links to Amazon)

Materials

  • Peanuts (plastic)
  • Grapes (plastic)
  • Bread (plastic)
  • Apron
  • Clean, empty Jar (labeled “peanut butter”)
  • Plastic knife or spatula
  • Peanut Butter and Jelly Book by Nadine Westcott

But I know it may be tricky to find all of those things right away, so here are printable prop options so you can make this now:

What to do

Print and laminate the printables.

Take your book copy and props and place them together. A container like an open basket, a book bin or a large Ziploc bag will work!

We liked to keep a blanket nearby these materials so that they could create a theater-like puppet stage to sit behind.

But all they need to do is have the book and the materials and use the props to tell as much as they can:

  • about the story
  • from the story
  • with the story (following along)

Encourage kinders to use as many words from the text as they can remember. With a patterned story like this one, it’s pretty easy, especially if you read this story multiple times before you release it to your students.

Conclusion

There you have it – how to make a Peanut Butter and Jelly retell activity for your class. I love that it doesn’t require much to get it done. {wink}

If you like this activity, check out this list of 20 more famous stories that are great for retelling in kindergarten. Most of them are just as simple to pull together and I’ve found all of the downloadable resources for you.

Other books that are great for retelling in kindergarten

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