HomeNursery RhymesLittle Jack Horner

Little Jack Horner

A traditional Mother Goose nursery rhyme

Starts at Little Jack Horner in our 18-minute Mother Goose Treasury, then plays on through 30 classic rhymes  ✦  Watch on YouTube

🎄 A Little Jack Horner Short of its own is coming this December, just in time for Christmas.

A little boy, a Christmas pie and one very pleased thumb. Behind this cheerful rhyme sits an old story about a pie carried all the way to a king.

Read the Rhyme

🖍️ Teaching this rhyme? A free printable activity pack is below.

✦ The Rhyme ✦

Full Text of Little Jack Horner

Traditional English nursery rhyme. Public domain.

Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner, Eating a Christmas pie; He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And said, “What a good boy am I!”

✦ About the Rhyme ✦

A Christmas Pie Rhyme

“Little Jack Horner” was first written down in 1725, though children were probably saying it long before. In Jack’s day a Christmas pie was a rich, sweet pie packed with dried fruit and spices, a little like today’s mince pies, and a “plum” often meant a raisin or other dried fruit.

In Somerset, in the west of England, people tell a story about where the rhyme came from. In the 1530s, it is said, the Abbot of Glastonbury sent King Henry VIII a Christmas pie with the deeds to twelve manor houses baked inside, and his steward, Thomas Horner, carried it to London. Along the way, the story goes, Horner pulled out one deed for himself: the Manor of Mells, the “plum” of the rhyme. The Horner family really did come to own Mells, though they have always said the tale isn’t true.

Sources: Britannica, “Nursery rhyme”; Historic UK, “Nursery Rhymes”.

✦ Talk About It ✦

Questions for Young Listeners

  • What was Jack eating?
  • What did Jack find when he put in his thumb?
  • Jack is very pleased with himself. What is something you are proud of?

✦ For Teachers, Homeschoolers & Families ✦

Free Little Jack Horner Activity Pack

Nursery rhyme craft ✦ Sequencing ✦ Rhyming worksheet ✦ Coloring page ✦ Handwriting

A 12-page printable nursery rhyme activity pack for ages 4–8 (pre-K through 2nd grade), in the classroom, homeschool or at the kitchen table. Here’s what’s inside:

  • The full rhyme with a listen-along QR code, talk-about-it questions and a play-it-out idea
  • A full-page nursery rhyme coloring page
  • A cut-and-paste cozy corner craft, an easy Little Jack Horner craft for little hands
  • Nursery rhyme sequencing: “Put the Rhyme in Order” strips with picture clues
  • A rhyming worksheet, a word search and a Trace & Write handwriting page
  • Kindergarten readiness: Count the Words (clap and count) and Pencil Warm-Ups (pre-writing strokes)
  • Answer key with the kindergarten skills each page practices
Little Jack Horner coloring page printable for preschool and kindergarten
Coloring page
Little Jack Horner nursery rhyme cut-and-paste craft PDF
Cut-and-paste craft
Little Jack Horner word search worksheet for kindergarten
Word search

Kindergarten skills in this pack

These Mother Goose nursery rhyme worksheets give pre-K and kindergarten children gentle practice with early reading and writing: hearing rhyming words and counting the words in a sentence (phonological awareness), following print from left to right and putting the rhyme’s lines in order (print concepts), pre-writing pencil warm-ups and letter tracing (handwriting), and position words like left, right and under in the cut-and-paste craft.

The activities support kindergarten skills like those practiced in CKLA Kindergarten Skills Unit 1. Little Jack Horner is also one of the rhymes in CKLA Kindergarten Domain 1: Nursery Rhymes and Fables. Storyland Classics is not affiliated with Amplify or the Core Knowledge Foundation.

Get It Free With Your Library Card

Sign up and your welcome email will include your Guide Shelf link, where every free guide and activity pack lives. Sized for US Letter, and prints well in black and white. See all teacher guides

✦ For Grown-Ups ✦

Good to Know About Little Jack Horner

What is a Christmas pie?

In the 1700s a Christmas pie was a large pie filled with dried fruit, spices and sometimes meat, baked as a holiday treat. Mince pies are its smaller modern cousins, so the rhyme is a lovely one to share over a plate of them in December.

Was Little Jack Horner a real person?

Perhaps. A Somerset legend links him to Thomas Horner, who carried a Christmas pie to King Henry VIII in the 1530s and came to own the Manor of Mells. It is a fun story, but nobody can prove the rhyme was written about him, and his family says it wasn’t.

Is there a free printable activity for Little Jack Horner?

Yes. The free Little Jack Horner activity pack has a coloring page, a cut-and-paste craft, nursery rhyme sequencing strips, a rhyming worksheet, handwriting and pencil warm-up pages and a word search for ages 4–8. It comes free with a Storyland Classics Library Card. See what’s inside.

Wondering about public domain or classroom use? Every text on Storyland Classics is free to read and share. See our FAQ for teachers and families.

✦ Keep Reading ✦

More Nursery Rhymes

Mary Had a Little Lamb

A rhyme with a true story

Jack Be Nimble

Quick as a candlestick

All Nursery Rhymes

Every Mother Goose rhyme, read aloud.