Chicka Chicka BOOM BOOM!

This is the song we've been singing this week!  The kids have been singing it a lot...and I think it's so fun!  I was not very familiar with this book, but now I'm interested in getting a copy of our own.  We borrowed the books, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and "Chicka Chicka 1 2 3" from some friends.  I found some great ideas online to do with the kids this week and so far it's been a big success. 

 Monday we read the book and looked at a coconut (the book talks about the letters of the alphabet climbing up a coconut tree). We touched the outside, shook it (you could hear the water sloshing), and then I tried to crack it open.  I read about it on the internet and thought it was going to be no problem.  Well...several hammer hits later we still didn't have an open coconut.  So we went outside and sat on the carport steps and I said, "ok, kids, I'm just going to throw this down on the carport and see if it cracks."  Boom!  It cracked big time.  We lost the coconut water, which I really wanted to taste, but there was still a little in the bottom of the biggest piece.  We took it inside and I started scraping out some coconut to taste.

 We also smelled the inside. A few minutes later we were sampling.  Sophie loved it!  It's not as sweet as what you get in the bag at the store...well, I haven't tried the unsweetened...but still very tasty.  It was a great sensory activity.

Today we made little coconut trees (I called them Chicka trees) out of toilet paper rolls and construction paper.  It wasn't as neat as I would've liked it...but the kids thought it was great.  Isaac used letter stickers to decorate his and Sophie wanted to use a stencil I had to do hers.  Sophie suggested we put some coconuts on there...so I cut out some coconuts : ).  She was especially excited about this and has been talking about her Chicka tree all night : )

Tomorrow and Thursday we're going to do some activities that I found online.  At this site (Hubbard's Cupboard) there are so many good ideas and links to free printables.  I printed out the number pages and an alphabet activity that I think will be good.

This blog also has some great ideas to use for a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom unit.

Some other fun things I thought of was to do something with the Chicka Chicka 123 book.  This is all about numbers and how they climb up the apple tree.  I thought we could have an apple snack...along with a cute idea for a coconut tree snack (a celery stalk, some peanut butter, and some Alphabits cereal!).  There are also some neat shapes being used for the bees that come and shoo away the numbers from the apple tree.  With Sophie's math curriculum this week we're studying shapes and one lesson is making animals out of shapes.  I thought I could tie in this book along with her math lesson.  Now to just be sure to prep all the shapes : ). 

This is a great beginning-of-the-year book to study.  It covers the alphabet and it's a lot of fun.  It also talks some about colors.  I'm doing some color sheets I found on this blog.  Check her "products" button out.  She's got some great site word sheets that are very inexpensive.  She also has several of her products on the site Teachers Pay Teachers (I think it's all one word on the url).  I'm just familiarizing myself with this site, but there are some things you can get that are free and some that you have to buy.  The ones I saw were reasonably priced but I definitely gravitated towards the free stuff ; ). 

I hope this will be a good resource to some of you!

Blessings!