Welcome
to the
Chicka Chicka Boom Room!
Our September focus is always so much fun as we explore all there is to know about letters and letter sounds with the fun story by Bill Martin: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.
We started by transforming the kindergarten room into the Chicka Boom Room, complete with a palm tree and the mischievous letters right outside our classroom door. All the munchkins had their picture taken in front of the tree to add to a class book that we made.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! Look who's in our room!
Then we created a Chicka Boom Bag. We used it all throughout our unit, adding all the fun games and activities as we learned.
Then we got busy!
Letters, Letters, Letters
Our main focus with this story was, of course, the letters! The munchkins had a great time searching for the lost letters in our sand box, ordering them and then hiding them again for their friends to find. I'm not sure Mr. Bill who vacuums the floor had as much fun, but what can we say? Learning can be messy!
We also had some fun creating our own mini coconut trees for the letters to climb. It's always a hit when the paint tubs come out, so painting the tree trunk with chocolate brown paint was definitely the favorite part of this project. Tracing and cutting the hand print leaves...not so much! It was quite a challenge to keep all five fingers connected. But the fun continued as we got out the alphabet sticker sheets, adding as many letters as we could squeeze onto the tree. Many of the munchkins even formed some of the words we have been working on. We had lots of trees full of "to", "we", "is" and "this". Great idea, munchkins!
These finished projects looked great on our back wall!
We got the paints out for another project, as the munchkins painted wooden mini-trees and wrote sentence strips about them to further practice some of those words we are working on. The munchkins did a great job with the sentence: This is my tree.
Our escapades with reading continued at our centers with lots of opportunities to use the pocket chart and pointer, adding letters to the blow up coconut tree while practicing the repetitive text from the story.
Here comes "P" up the coconut tree!
But probably the most fun during center time was had at our listening center. The munchkins loved to visit and here Ray Charles retell the story in his classic voice!
Chicka! Chicka! BOOM! BOOM!
Patterns and Plants
Our Chicka Chicka unit was a fun way to reinforce all we know about patterns, plus learn a bit about plants, as well! The munchkins had fun making rug patterns with our magnetic letters, marble coconuts and foam trees and then transferring those patterns to paper for our bulletin board.
The biggest pattern ever!
And then we took some time to explore all the parts of a plant...the coconut tree as our main focus. The munchkins did a great job learning the four main parts and why they are important.
Putting together our Plant Parts Floor Puzzle at center time...
...and making our own, too!
And Don't Forget the Food!
The favorite part of any unit is always Wednesday Recipe Day! This unit was no exception, as the munchkins pieced together lots of yummy goodies to create an edible coconut tree like no other.
Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom!
Until next time...
Giggles,
Mrs. D.
