One of my favorite back to school read alouds/picture books to introduce words/letters/the alphabet has got to be the classic Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. It’s great for kinder babies and firsties the first few days/weeks of school to get them talking about letters/sounds before you do any letter sound assessments on them. It’s a fun way to look at the alphabet and if you can get your hands on the Ray Charles song/rap either on you tube or an old school cd that is super fun for them too.
There are so many different ways you can incorporate this read aloud and tons of extension activities to do with it that are perfect for those first few weeks of school.
Kids LOVE to talk about their names and while I’m on the subject let’s talk about names. KNOWING and LEARNING kids name is of upmost importance! If you aren’t sure how to pronounce it – ask them, tell them you want to say their name correctly so you don’t ‘butcher’ their name every single time. It’s hurtful to your students if you don’t learn their name and say it correctly. I had a student a few years back in 3rd grade. I could not pronounce his name correctly and it was frustrating. I finally pulled him aside and told him how important it was for me to say his name correctly. So I had him say it to me slowly and I phonetically wrote it on a sticky note in a way that I knew I could say. He looked at the note and laughed saying that is NOT how you spell my name. I told him I knew but I would never mispronounce his name again. Guess what!?!?! I didn’t mess it up ever again. Last year I ran into his mom and she said her son still talks about how I made such an effort to say his name correctly. He said he loved that about me and wished all his teachers tried that hard to learn his name. WOW, you never know the impact a simple gesture has on kids.
and now back to the original blog post…( #soapbox )
As I was saying Chicka Chicka Boom Boom has so many different possiblities: snack ideas, alphabet ideas, crafts, letter recognition, name spelling, vowels/consonant activities and more.
Here are some things I created to extend the learning from the story.
The types of sorts/letter worksheets you can do with this are endless:
and so many more in my pack as well.
You can also have them taste a coconut, I’ve included an idea for an anchor chart/graph you do whole class.
Need fine motor skill practice?!?! This is also included:
This story is so great and as you can see there are so many ways to extend the book in your classroom. You can even recreate the book on larger paper and make a class book assigning different pages to kids or table groups.
*** I take no responsibility for the presence of allergies in your classroom for the snack ideas, always check your students health records to be sure it’s safe to expose your students to these products. ***
If you want to grab these activities you can find them by clicking
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