Leap Ahead Learning Preschool: "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"

The above books by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault were the complete inspiration for this weeks theme. I'm sure most of you have read the alphabet version of "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" before, but in case you haven't it is about the alphabet climbing up a coconut tree one letter at a time until the tree gets overloaded and 'BOOM BOOM' goes the letters. But, they don't give up even with their injuries and try again. So, our week was all about letters and numbers!

For an art project we did an I spy alphabet bottle. This activity was inspired by one of my preschool moms and some of the supplies were supplied by her as well, so thanks Jill! There should be one letter of the whole alphabet in the children's bottles, so hopefully the kids successfully transfered them from their bags into the bottles. They had a lot of fun finding the letters after they were made.

For a writing center we did sentence strip names. For this I simply wrote each child's name on a sentence strip and the children traced their name with glue. When the glue dried, they had a crayon rubbing of their name. (some of these names didn't dry in time to take home so your child may not have them yet.)

For a math center, I had a center I called 'straight-up' counting. Trying to stick with the whole coconut tree theme, I decided to have them count with a manipulative they could build up.

We had a tree trunk that needed some bark. The kids took their 'bark' (toilet paper rolls) and dressed the tree. They either could count by 1 up to 10, from 10 down to 1, or by 2's. They did a great job!

We also used alphabet stamps this week. I had copies of coconut trees that the children could stamp alphabet letters climbing up the trees just like in the book.

I also have the coconut tree below (purchased from Lakeshore) that has velcro lowercase letters of the alphabet that can be attached to it like in the book. I saw an idea on a blog (I apologize for not referencing who's, I can't remember!, but I give her full credit for this idea) where she hid the letters in plastic easter eggs and pretended they were coconuts. She hid them around the room and the children found them and discovered what letter was in their coconut and placed it on the tree. We did something very similar. They children really enjoyed hiding the eggs and finding all 26 letters.

We practiced pairing our lowercase letters to their uppercase counterparts this week with these coconut tree cut-outs I made from kinderhive.net.

I stuck tiny magnets on the back so they would stick to the dry erase board. They are getting so great at letter recognition and sounds!

And, more letters! For this writing center, we had the uppercase letters of the alphabet and the kids used dry erase markers to trace the letters. These letters are great too because they have arrows telling the kids which way to draw the lines, and a green dot where they should start and a red dot telling them where they should end. Great for correct letter form.

The kids could "drop" by this center for water-dropper letters. I wrote each letter of the alphabet on wax paper with dots for the children to fill in with water drops.

The children loved this. I had blue and yellow water, so they had fun mixing the two to make green. They also discovered that the drops could move! Once they placed the water drop, they could grab it with their dropper and drag it to another spot.

For a math center, we had our monkey math links. We know monkeys love trees!

The monkeys each have a number on their belly and the children attach that many math links to the monkeys hand.

And, for a science and exploratory center, we had real coconuts. I had one that was already cracked open, and one that they could use tools to try to crack open. I didn't think they would be able to crack it because of how hard they are to open, but they were determined and sure enough by the end of class the second coconut was open! They were also able to try the coconut if they wanted.