A Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day!

We've had a lot of sick days in February, and that has left me scrambling for activities for the kids to do when they weren't quiet well enough to join their normal planned activities. Lu thinks that these "themed" days are so much fun and is constantly trying to come up with either books she wants to plan a theme around, or something that she wants to learn about. 

Our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom day was initiated by Lu finding the book under her bed.  Here's what we did in case you want to have your own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom day.


We read the book, sang the alphabet song, and then set off to crafting.

I let her cut letters out of a magazine, and then she got to glue them onto a quick tree that I sketched out.  (The template is below if you want to print it out and use it).

Here's Lu's finished tree.  This kept her attention for a good hour.  She was completely obsessed about trying to cut out the letters as perfectly as possible.  She didn't get all the way through the alphabet, but she was very proud of her finished tree.

When she was cutting, and my littlest snugglebug was playing with alphabet puzzles, I found a piece of fabric fused with wonder under to a piece of felt.  I used these fabric markers to draw out all of the letters of the alphabet and quickly cut them out.  Lu helped me cut out some felt to make the rest of the tree.  Then the girls enjoyed putting them up on their felt board.  Ellie absolutely loved hitting the felt board and making all of the letters fall out of the tree.  Then she could put them back on the board.  I don't know why, but Ellie loves the letter O.  It's the only letter she knows and she points it out now in everything she sees.

After these activities the girls were still begging for more alphabet activities.    Lu asked why all of the letters fell out of the coconut tree.  I figured this might be a good "experiment" for them, so I ran into the garage and grabbed a cardboard cylinder and a piece of poster board. 

We assembled quick tree and then I got our alphabet puzzle and let the kids go to town stacking the letters on.

Of course it didn't take long for the "Boom Boom!" to occur.  Down came the stacked letters and tree to the kids' delight.  They kept stacking and re stacking until finally Lu announced, "I get it!  The letters fell out of the tree because there were too many of them and they weren't balanced!"

But that revelation didn't make the stacking any less fun.  The pieces were put back together and the kids started all over again, creating one "Boom Boom" after another.



All in all, it was a fun day.  Here's my quickly drawn coconut tree if you'd like to print it out for your kids to use.  Have you had an alphabet day?  Leave a comment with your great alphabet ideas.