PeeWees: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (week 1)

Get ready for a whirlwind of PeeWee posts - I'm almost two months behind!

From PeeWee mom Shaunel (Poppy was out of town)...

We had a super fun day with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. There are so many possibilities to explore with letters, coconut trees, and balance.

Playtime started off with letter magnets, a letter puzzle, and a letter chart.  Jackson and Henry worked on the letter chart, while Bodie carefully put each magnet onto the whiteboard. Sometimes he would group the letters that were the same, but his most important goal seemed to be putting them in order. I quickly saw (as expected) that capital letters were not a problem. Lower case were much harder, but Bodie seemed to be fairly ontop of those as well as sound. Letter order was a lot more difficult than I thought. Jackson and Henry were working on putting the letters they found into the correct pocket on the letter chart. This was tricky even when we sang and pointed to the ABC's, so we'll be working more on that next week. At the end of playtime, we all did the letter puzzle together, with each boy putting one letter at a time onto the puzzle with a little chant and cheer to go along. Super cute!

Circle time included the standup song that they still love, singing the ABC's, and then singing them again, while placing letter cards on the floor while we sang it. We then counted the letter cards. That 14 and 15 are still tricky for Henry and Jackson, but Bodie's going to pull them along. The 20's seemed to be no problem :)

We read the story twice. Second time while keeping a beat. They did a great job.

After potty and handwashing, we had our snacks of baby carrots and bananas formed into each boys' initial (all letters are just forms of lines, circles and semi-circles). Then, we had TJ's letter cookies for dessert. I had to put a limit on those--for the boys and myself! They're so yummy.

We proceeded to practice writing our letters at stations in the living room. I made a stencil of a B, H and J--both upper and lower case. They each got to practice writing their letter on the chalk board, magna doodle and whiteboard. Jackson had done something similar before, and I was surpised by how experienced he was at this. All the boys got significantly better by their last station. We practiced freehanding this on the back of our art. Each boy used the white crayon to write their initial on the back of their paper. They all needed some help, but I was thrilled with how legible it turned out.

Art consisted of making a coconut tree and sticking foam sticker letters (compliments of the pee wee box), all over the tree. I love how different their trees and the placement of their letters were. Bodie's all landed on top of each other, while Henry's were nicely spaced out up and down the trunk. They all did a great job of taking the backing off their stickers--definitely a good developmental activity.

We had a dance break to Sesame Street's Hip Hop ABC. Turned more into a couch jump-a-thon.

We then talked a bit about why the letters all fell out of the coconut tree. I had put a foam letter on the monkeys from our barrel of monkeys. They took turns hanging a monkey off one side of a hanger, and we watched how the hanger started to tip more and more as we put more monkeys on. When we put the last one one, we said, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom." We then explored putting them all over the hanger and how the hanger didn't tilt like it had earlier.

I nixed the next activity for time sake, and we read the story one more time. Since we had a little bit of time left, we attempted the alphabet chart with both lower and upper case letters. They were a bit worn out of such activities by this point, so we did our goodbye chant, and rocked out to ABC Rock until parent came.

Fun times, can't wait for next week :)
Shaunel