Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. is one of my favorite back to school books. It is a familiar story to most students and has a lot of rhyme, rhythm, and repetitive text that make it perfect for active 5 year olds! We had a wonderful first week back at school diving into this book. The highlight of our week was our STEM challenge on Friday. The students were put into pairs and given a box of materials to make their own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree. It is so fascinating to see how their minds work this early in the year. Many of them don’t know how to work well with a partner yet. We talked about how important it is to listen to and try all ideas. You might just be surprised by which idea works. I loved seeing which students were persistant when one idea didn’t work the way they planned and which students couldn’t seem to move on past their first idea. This activity taught me so much about their learning styles! We will have a different STEM challenge every month so there will be lots of opportunities to put what we learned into action. Eventually, all of the teams were successful at keeping their letters on the “tree” and had a lot of fun trying new ways to solve the problem.