Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Centers

Our first full week of kindergarten is in the books and we had SO much fun. We have been launching Daily Five, began math centers/ math workshop, and read one of my favorite books... Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! We read the story during our "inquiry" science/social studies blocks. By the end of the week, my friends were able to read the story with me!

After the story each day, my class split up into their inquiry groups and went to a center. By the end of the week, they had visited all four centers (we started on Tuesday)!

My small friends had a great time with their centers and learned a lot too! In addition to practicing letter recognition and letter sounds, they also worked on their independence. We do centers pretty much all day so this is really important in my room.

Here is a look at our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom centers!

At the Play Doh alphabet center, students worked with the play doh mats to form each letter. I use play doh a lot in my room, so I wanted to get them working with it right away. They did wonderfully! When we were learning our math centers, I had taught all of my friends to roll their play doh "into a snake" first. They all did it on their own at this center! The play doh mats are awesome and they are from Lakeshore. If you don't have them, you can grab another set that is included in my Chicka Chicka resource.

Bingo Center

Here is our bingo center! I had both upper/lowercase letter cards and beginning word pictures so that my friends could do something appropriate for their level. This isn't just a great center for letter recognition and beginning sounds-- it is also great for working in a group and learning about winning and losing.

Sensory Letter Center

At the sensory letter bin center, students chose letters out of the bin and found the matching letter on their mat. I included more mats then were needed at the center in case they finished early. If they were done with ALL of them, I let them practice making each others names with the letters. I was so proud of how well they worked independently.

Art Center

I love crafts. Any way I can incorporate them into centers, I do! At this center, the kids cut apart their names and glued it to their papers. They wrote their name and counted how many letters are in it. Then we made the top of the palm tree using green paint and handprints! I had taken pictures of them earlier in the week so we glued it on. At the end, they had their very own Chicka Chicka palm tree.

Chicka Chicka BOOM Cards!

In addition to our centers, we did the some Boom Cards! Boom Cards are digital, interactive, self-checking task cards. My kids will be using Boom Cards throughout the year during math centers (math through technology center), Daily Five, and inquiry centers. I have been introducing the cards and how they work this week on the ActivBoard as a whole group. We completed these sets of cards throughout the week and it was so much fun! I can't wait for my friends to start doing them on their own. Here is a video preview of the Chicka cards:

If you are looking to do Chicka Chicka Boom Boom centers with your own class, you can hop on over to my store and check out my resource by clicking the picture below. It includes all of the activities above and more!

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