“Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,” by John Archambault, is a favorite read-aloud book for many preschool teachers. Try out some of these “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” preschool arts and crafts projects to go along with this well-loved story.
Do you love the great story of “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”? If so, you’ll love finding ways to help your students use creative ways to build on what they’ve learned from one of the best preschool books around. Here are some great “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” preschool arts and crafts ideas you can use in your classroom.
Handprint Coconut Tree
Kids can each make their own coconut tree with this “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” craft. With a piece of construction paper as a base, show kids how to use a brown strip of construction paper to make the trunk of the tree, and then have them collect leaves from outside to glue on as the coconut tree’s leaves. After the glue dries, they can use alphabet stickers or letters cut from magazines to glue the letters to their coconut tree. If you’d like, encourage each student to use the letters to spell out his or her name on the top of the tree for a personalized touch. You can then display their artwork around the classroom, possibly on a fall- or nature-related bulletin board.
Life-sized Manipulative
Looking for a fun way to act out the story of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom? Before you start this craft, you’ll have to make a coconut tree from a large piece of green tag board (cut into the shape of the umbrella of a palm tree) and a large piece of brown tag board (cut in the shape of the tree’s trunk). Attach magnets to the back and hang your tree from the blackboard, or tack it up to a bulletin board. Cut out brown circles from construction paper to look like coconuts and give one to each student to decorate. Hang the coconuts up on the tree. Then use alphabet magnets or paper cuts to have kids act out the story as you read.
Make a Letter
In order to make this craft with students, you’ll need to prepare full-page outlines of individual letters of the alphabet. Each child should receive the letter that begins their names. They can then cut out the letter (with help, if needed) and decorate it with flat art supplies, such as markers, crayons, sequins, stickers, and ribbons. Then give each student two large googly eyes to glue on their letters to make them look like the little letter people in the book. As you reread the book, you can even have them use the life-sized coconut tree described earlier in this article to act out the story with their decorated letters.
These “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” preschool arts and crafts can be used individually or together as part of a larger lesson plan . Kids will enjoy showing off their creations and using them as you read the story again and again!
