chicka chicka boom boom

 Last semester I had to do a project for art class.

The project was interjecting a children's book into

learning lessons (such as math, spelling, reading, etc.)

and making a tri-fold board of activities.

I chose the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

I love this book and there are so many ideas that you can

come up with using it.

Once I decided on the book, the ideas started flowing.

I had a hard time choosing my activities, because I thought of so many fun ones.

To make my learning center, I bought a tri-fold board

and painted it yellow and pink to match the book cover.

I also added some fun yellow polka dots to the pink sides.

I glued some white ribbon down the edges between the pink and yellow

to add some fun detail, but to also hide some of the flaws ;)

Then I took some brown poster board and cut it into strips for the tree.

I folded the two edges in just a bit (to give me something to glue down)

and curved the poster board on the tri-fold board to give the tree a 3 D effect.

Next, I took some green poster board and made some leaves.

I wanted the leaves to hang above the tree and the board.

I used a glue gun to hold it all together (regular school glue does not work).

I cut some circles out of the brown poster board for coconuts

and glued them onto the leaves.

I bought some magnetic letters and glued them to the tree and the board

(again, for the 3 D effect).

I got some paint sample chips from the store and cut out the letters of the book title.

I totally love how it all came out.

The activities that I chose were fun and could incorporate a multitude of learning activities

One activity that I chose to do was story retelling with magnets.

I bought some clear garden stones from the dollar store and

wrote the letters on them, both capital and lower case.

I glued a small white circle to the back to make the letters pop

and added a magnet to them.

I got some brown and green paint chip samples from the store and

cut them out to make a coconut tree.  I thought it would be more fun

to cut the tree trunk into strips so it could be made to bend like the tree

in the story.  I also added a magnet to the back of the tree parts and made

coconuts too.

I bought two cookie trays from the dollar store to use with this activity.

The letters can also be used to match capital and lower case letters together.

Spell words, learning the alphabet, and much more....

For my second learning activity, I chose to do pasta estimation.

I bought some letter pasta 

(which was super hard to find - seriously, I went to

three stores before I finally found some).

I thought it would be more fun if the letters were different colors.

so, I dyed them with food coloring.

All you need to do is put the pasta in a large ziploc bag, add

a few drops of food coloring and a spoonful or two of rubbing alcohol

and shake the bag until the pasta is completely colored.

Then lay the pasta out on newspaper to dry.

easy peasy

and see...isn't it way cuter colored than plain old pasta???

Grab some containers and let the kids guess and measure the amount of pasta

You can also use the pasta in a sensory bin.

You can come up with a bunch of different learning activities to do with this pasta.

I also did a letter tree.

I drew a picture of a tree on a sheet of paper and bought

foam letter stickers.  Children can find the letters to their name

and put them in the tree.  Then for more learning ideas, they can 

add the number of letters in their name and make a graph or

they can spell out their spelling words with the letters as well.

My last activity was letter beads.  Children can make a bracelet using the

letter beads that spell out their name.  Again, you can use the letter beads in a number of ways.

The possibilities are endless....

Wouldn't this be a fun activity to do one day?