Easy fun with letters using Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Check out our favorite fun activities and crafts that go along with this children’s classic book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! This book is a great way to encourage letter recognition, reading comprehension, and fine motor skills with little learners. Grab a few simple materials and this book, and you’ll have so many fun ways to learn with young children.
Fun Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Activities
Did you have a favorite children’s book growing up? Or maybe one you read to your kids now? In our house, an absolute favorite was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault. And now this is one of my kid’s favorite books, too!
If you’ve never heard of it, check it this adorable book. Whether this is your first time reading it or it’s already one of your favorite, try these fun learning activities that your children will love!
A told B and B told C
First, start by reading the books to your kids. You can read it as many times as you’d like, but if your kids are anything like our toddler, you’ll be reading the book on repeat. After the first few times through the book, read it with the purpose of emphasizing a single aspect.
First, point out all the colors. Another time through, talk about all the shapes.
And then, read it to find all the letters. One of the great things about this book is that it highlights both uppercase and lowercase letters. So, be sure to encourage letter identification for the uppercase letters that appear as well.
As you try these activities, you’ll be reverting back to the book often enough that you’ll want to have it handy. We recommend leaving it out where your kids can see it and get to it themselves. Try making your own literacy centers or reading corner for your little ones as a fun way of encouraging reading.
Our Favorite Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Activities
Here’s all our favorite ways to use this fun book with young children! All of these themed activities are great together if you’re building full lesson plans or can be used on their own.
Letter Play Dough
Play dough is a fun activity for kids of all ages that builds fine motor skills and is still so much fun. Play dough is a simple way to include sensory play with less mess for little hands.
Read about all our favorite play dough tips and tricks here. You can buy these letter stamps or you can just use magnetic alphabet letters.
Try a video
After reading the book, you can try a video to get your kids even more interested. For instance, we used to love listening to the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom song that you can find here.
Then, you can also try a video of a read along with basic animations. There are several good options on Youtube, but here’s one we like.
As a side note: If your child asks to watch something or you need to distract them for a few minutes to get things done, look up book read alongs on Youtube. There’s lots of great books on there, and it’s also a good alternative to TV. This is what we use for screen time instead of TV shows.
Magnetic Letters Activity
One way to encourage fine motor skills and letter recognition as well as reading comprehension is to grab some magnetic letters! Have your child put the letters that appear in the book up on the fridge as your read. You can even draw your own coconut tree and attach it to the fridge for the letters to “climb to the top of the coconut tree”.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Sensory Bin
Another great activity for young children that goes along well with this great book! An easy way to make this sensory activity happen is to just add in letters to an existing sensory bin. We took the magnetic letters we used for the other activities and added them into a popcorn seed sensory bin.
If you’re nervous about the mess of sensory bins or starting with pretty young children, read how to teach your child to use a sensory bin here. But don’t be scared! Sensory bins are awesome for children and are a great form of open-ended play with all these benefits.
Fun with Letters: A Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Craft
Materials Needed
- Green, brown, and yellow construction paper
- ABC stickers
- Glue stick
- Scissors
We found all of our supplies at the local dollar store.
Make the shapes
After talking through all the shapes you and your kids see in the book, you’ll start by cutting them out. If your child is pretty good with scissors, you can draw the shapes on the paper for them to cut out. Or you can cut them out yourself.
This may be a good time to practice scissors skills along with practicing shapes. First, you will need about 5-8 green triangles of all different sizes. Next, cut out three brown rectangles for the tree trunk. Lastly, two brown circles will be the coconuts.
Piecing the tree together
Next, you’ll have them glue together the coconut tree. First, let them use a glue stick to put glue on the back of the shape.
Start with the tree trunk, then the leaves, and finally the coconuts. Importantly, keep checking back to the book to look at the tree and the shapes they used there.
As they are working on putting their shapes together, you can offer as much guidance as you think is needed. Younger children will probably need more assistance if you want an identifiable tree. Here’s our example of assisted vs unassisted:
Working on vocabulary
While they are making their tree, this is a great opportunity to talk them through what they’re doing. Especially try using positional words such “next to”, “on top of”, or “behind”.
Also try using contrasting words describing the tree. For example, ask them if their tree is tall or short. And keep referring back to the book if they have questions about the shapes or the tree as a whole.
Adding the ABCs
Finally, you’ll have them add the alphabet stickers to their tree. Again, you can offer as much or as little assistance as you see fit for this step. But this is great for fine motor skills!
Younger children may need some practice putting stickers on paper, so you may want to try on a scrap piece of paper first. We even found cute animal ABC stickers that my son loved.
The final product
While my son didn’t necessarily care how similar his tree looked to the one in the book, he did make the connection. After putting the stickers on, he told me that the letters were falling out of the coconut tree.
Like many activities we do here, the final product isn’t nearly as important as the process and what they learned while doing it. However, that doesn’t stop us from putting in on the refrigerator (even if you can’t tell it’s a coconut tree).
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom…It’s a Full Moon!
What are some of your favorite children books we can do activities with?
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