Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, will there be enough room? The answer to that in our classroom is NO! We are so over our 15 student cap that I have no tables, no chairs and it’s cramped and smelly in our room. We are running over each other, sweating up a storm and just plain sardined up in room 114. But we love it! Even the teacher is having some issues with the odor. Thankfully, I have an EBOK in my closet. What’s an EBOK you ask? It is something all teacher’s should have on hand. It’s an Emergency Body Odor Kit for those days when the deodorant just can’t keep up with the expectations of a teacher. And you know when the Degree deodorant commercial says “It won’t let you down…” they lied. I would give them angry arms but I’m concerned that the Degree let me down. Ok, enough about my deodorant issues…
This week we celebrate Chicka Chicka Boom Boom all week long. This is such a fun book to introduce letters and the alphabet to my students. We read the book each day. Monday I read it to the kids. Tuesday through Friday we start learning how to echo read. I love using echo reading in my class because I believe it helps build their fluency and expression and helps build stronger readers overall. I use the “my turn” “your turn” model to remind the students that I read then they read. And by Friday they are reading the book almost entirely on their own. Isn’t progress great!
I also use an interactive chart in my class during this week which we love. I got the idea from Hubbard’s Cupboard and have used it every with huge success. I created the chart my first year in kindergarten with the words and palm tree, just like the picture. There is a slit in the chart for sentence strips to slide through. I use sentence strips with uppercase and lowercase letters. And we also do our names. The kids go crazy to read their names in the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom poem! Come on, even as adults we love seeing our names included in places. OK, at least I do. I won’t lie.
If you’ve read any of my posts (or if you can through the rambling body odor discussions) you know I LOVE to do art with my kids. I usually do at least 3 projects a week! Yes, that’s a lot of stress and work but the results are so worth it. The projects are usually tied to books we’ve read or the theme we’re using for the week. But sometimes it’s fun. This week we did two great projects for CCBB!
First we used out arms and hands to make a coconut tree! I paint each students arm brown and they press it on the paper. HELLO MESSY! I was covered in paint. Thankfully I was wearing my new masculine apron so no clothes were sacrificed during this project. Next we paint our hands green to make the leaves of our tree. Finally, we add letter stickers to our tree!
We also make a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree out of sandpaper and feathers. This is the project that I use to introduce glue bottles and BABY DOTS of glue. Each child glues a strip of sandpaper to their paper and adds feathers at the top. We love playing with the feathers! After the assembly is finished, the students gets a bag of letters. In the bag are all of the letters they recognized on their kindergarten assessment. We have a long discussion about why we have different amounts of letters and how kindergarten is for learning and we are learning our letters. We say if you have 4 letters, you’re amazing! And if you have 20 letters, you’re amazing. This is collected and used as one of our REQUIRED assessment pieces for the week.
On Friday we make a CCBB counting book. This is another REQUIRED assessment piece that I collect for evidence that I’m assessing! The kids each get a coloring book with pages 1-5. They use circle stickers to place the correct number of coconuts on their tree. After I check their coconuts they can color their trees!
And finally on Friday we make a CCBB snack! We always end our week together with a snack or cooking! We used graham crackers, green apple slices and Whoppers candy to make our tree. During the fun, one of my little monster said, “You guys, it’s our first “whop” party!” I love my job. Our first whop party was a success as was our week together!
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! Will there be enough room? Here comes the end of the post!