Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

This week was our official start back into homeschool for the year. With my 2 girls who are in preschool and kindergarten, we are working with a book each week, tying in language arts, math, and other subjects as we can.

What better book to start the year off with than Chicka Chicka Boom Boom? We have read it before, so it wasn't new to the kids, but we found a lot of fun activites to go along with it as we practiced the letters of the alphabet.

 

The book we have came with a CD of Ray Charles reading the story, along with some fun song versions of the story. So the first 2 days, I just read the story to them from the book, and the other days we listened to different tracks from the CD.

 

For some hands-on-fun, I poured some bags of dry pasta into a plastic tub, and then buried in a set of alphabet magnets. The girls dug through and had to find the letters in order. The first day we used capital letters, the second day we used lowercase.

 

 

 

I found this cute page at http://www.pre-kpages.com/abcenter/

 

I called out a letter and they used Do-A-Dot markers to dab the letter.

 

 

 

We used a coconut tree template to make our own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom trees on construction paper. I printed out bubble letters of each of their names for them to add as well.

 



 

To incorporate some math, I drew some palm trees and put them in a plastic page protector, then we made "coconuts" from playdoh and I made up some word problems for the kids to add and subtract the coconuts from the tree.

 

 

 

We also completed this Hundreds Chart Mystery Picture of a palm tree - you can grab it FREE in my TpT store HERE!

 

 

 

 

Our last craft was another tree, made from paper towel rolls and construction paper.

 



 

 

As you can see, we had a lot of fun with the story this week!

Back to School Bash!

I'm teaming up with my friends at The Elementary Entourage blog for a fun filled Back to School Bash! We are bringing you tips, ideas, lessons, and most importantly, FREEBIES for this back to school season!

 

 

One thing that I think is so important at the beginning of the school year is to build a classroom community and make each student feel like they are an important part of the class. There are so many fun activities you can do to accomplish this! Here are some of my favorites:

 

1. The Hand Tree - students trace their hands, then decorate and cut out. Use all the hands as the leaves on a tree or petals on a flower for a bulletin board display.

 



 

 

 

 

 

2. We are Family - have students bring in family photos and display them in a fun way!

 

 

 

3. We Fit Together - Each student decorates a puzzle piece to represent them, then you fit them all together for a great display!

 

 

 

4.Web of Kindness - "Another favorite activity in the compliment category is the Web of Kindness. It starts with one student holding a ball of yarn who pays a compliment to another student. At the same time he or she quickly wraps the loose end of the yarn around his or her finger and then tosses the ball to the one who was complimented. This goes on until a web is created. It's really neat and creates a great visual of teamwork. I end the activity with the notion of no matter what grade or age you are, kindness sees no boundaries. It is something we all want and something we should all share with others."

 



 

 

5. Who Am I?  I've shared this before, but it fits my theme perfectly, so I thought I'd share it again. :) This fun FREEBIE is a great get to know you activity that helps even the shy students be able to share things about themselves. Students fill out the questions and draw a picture of themselves. Then you can gather them up and give the student a "quiz" to see how well they know their classmates! Try it again at the end of the year to show how much they have learned about each other!

 



 

 

 

More back to school resources: