#Chicka chicka boom boom alphabet tree full

Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom will be a fun way for us to play with letters and draw Joey’s attention to the individual differences. If a child only attends to the general shape of the letter he or she will not notice the small, distinguishing details that make the letter unique.Īlthough it is not age appropriate to expect a three year old to learn every letter name right now, I do want Joey exposed to the differences in the individual letters. As a teacher in a Title 1 elementary school for 13 years, I found that it was not uncommon for children who have not been exposed to letters in preschool or had home learning opportunities to have difficulty distinguishing between the r, n, and h, or the a, c, o, and e. The r is simply an n that was not finished, and an h is an n with a stick. Think about the similarities between the r, n, and h. One’s brain must be able to differentiate between a lowercase a and a c, as well as an r, n, and h, if one hopes to read. When children are learning letters, it can take time for them to attend to these small differences.

#Chicka chicka boom boom alphabet tree full

We can see that a c is almost a full circle, but not quite, while an a is a full circle with a line on the right.

If he is holding the letter a he will need to decide which letter on the page, a, b, or c, will match the letter in his hand.Īs adults, matching letters of the alphabet seems easy, but our brains have already learned to carefully differentiate between the small details that make each letter unique. When it is time for Joey to put the letter back onto the page, he will be able to use his matching skills. I made an additional laminated page of a coconut tree with velcro, so that Joey can take the letters off the book and put them into the tree, or take them off the tree and put them into the book. This will work on Joey’s visual motor skills and will encourage him to use his arms and fingers to reach a letter and pull it off the page. I laminated the copies, cut out each letter, and added velcro so that each letter in the book can be taken in and out of the book. I used my color copier and copied the alphabet from the end pages of the book.

Since my personal copy is fairly beaten up from years of classroom use I decided to cut out the pages, laminate them, and turn the book into an interactive version. I do not want him to be a passive participant in the book, but an active, engaged one. Although Joey is always attentive during read alouds, I like to find ways to challenge him and use the books to work on his goals.

It is a cute, rhythmic way to get familiar with the letters of the alphabet, and seemed like a book that Joey would enjoy.Īfter deciding to use Chicka-Chicka-Boom Boom with Joey, I started to plan ways I could adapt it to make it better for Joey’s needs. Of course, when all 26 letters get to the top of the tree there is not enough room and they all fall out (Boom!) and the uppercase letters come to help them up. It is a silly story about the lower case letters all climbing up a coconut tree. A popular book in preschool and kindergarten classrooms is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault.