A Simple Twist on a Classic Read-Aloud

A told B and B told C, things can be as simple as you want them to be…

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. An obligatory children’s book for kindergarten teachers everywhere. I have fond memories (from 25 years ago) of sitting in my kindergarten classroom listening to my teacher read this wonderful story to our class.

Well, you read the book. Now what? As teachers, we are always looking to integrate literacy into our fun art activities- So, of course, we are going to do some sort of project involving some of the story elements.

A quick Pinterest search here, a few pins there, and voila. You have a whole board of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom activities that look amazing.

If you’re like me, you might read this story at the beginning of the year as a bit of ABC review. At this point in the year, kindergarten teachers often compare “teaching” kindergarteners with herding cats… It is a highly accurate comparison.

I am not looking to cover all 30 of my kinder’s hands in paint to make a cute palm tree. I am not eager to painstakingly glue 30 brown paper rectangles to a toilet paper roll for a 3D palm tree. I also do not feel brave enough to tackle 30 cute Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree hats that have to be perfectly measured and stapled around 30 sweet little kindergarten heads.

I did not avoid these activities because I am lazy. I avoided them because after teaching for 9 years, I finally understand that the “cute” is not as important as the process of being able to create an individual piece of art-  in this case, a personal representation of what they understand a coconut tree to be.

We discussed the parts of the coconut tree and I provided alphabet letter stickers and my kinders created their own unique coconut trees. My prep work- Grab some white and yellow construction paper and some letter stickers…I also wanted to get an idea of which kinders could tell me their favorite part of the story, so I added a dictated sentence about which part of the story they liked best. I made it even simpler by making a sentence stem (“My favorite part of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is when…”) – less writing and faster completion.

Ahh, simplicity. Try it and you won’t regret it! 🙂