Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Week - Snacks, Crafts, Activities, Sensory Play, and Spelling Fun!

In an effort to bring some excitement back into eating for us we are having themed snack times! Each week we've chosen different books (pretty much little kid books to involve the younger kids more and keep them engaged) and the older girls planned snacks and activities to go with each book.

  

Our first theme week was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, not just because it is one of Dean's favorites (mine too!!), but because it was the book for my Advisory meeting this month and I was in charge of decorations. So 2 birds, one stone...

Throughout the week we ate:

-Alphabet shaped fries/tots

-Bourbon CHICKen nuggets

-Boom Chicka Pop brand popcorn

-Dried coconut (we get big bags at Costco because this stuff is FABULOUS)

-Alphabet shortbread cookies

-Scrabble Cheez-Its (letters on them)

-Fuze flavored water in banana pina colada 

-Fudge dipped coconut Oreos

-Coconut wafer cookies

-Target brand fruit snacks with the alphabet letters on them

-Coconut milk sorbet served in coconut shells (Costco find, these are soooo good)

-Homemade Alphabetties (think: Spaghettios)

-Apple slices with caramel and peanut butter (Chicka Chicka 123 has apple trees)

-Post Alpha-bits cereal, alone or on a peanut butter slathered celery stick

Our meeting this month was off-site and the decor needed to be simple and something that can be transported to a different location. These coconut trees were made with paper towel rolls and cake circles. I glued dollar store sandpaper circles to cardboard cake circles. After painting each paper towel roll brown I hot glued those to the cardboard.

I freehand drew some palm leaves on green cardstock and traced it to make several matching leaf sets (flip over your stencil/tracing pattern so leaves match on both sides of the paper towel tube).  I used green marker to add some detail and glued to the tube. I added a few cardstock coconuts to each tree and some very fun alphabet stickers (and even one with numbers for the Chicka 123 book).

I managed to burn myself with the hot glue pretty badly making those coconut trees.  It blistered instantly and eventually became infected.  Several weeks later the finger still hurts and the skin is still healing...Just wanted to complain.

Here's the display of food at the actual meeting. My rockstar friend made these adorable palm trees from bananas, oranges, and kiwi that we found on Pinterest. Adorable, no?!

Our activities (at least for the Littles):
-A super cute coconut tree printable I found on TeachersPayTeachers.  Dean added letter stickers to the picture and all the kids colored the trees.
-Gluing the colored alphabet noodles onto paper to spell sight words, our names, and make fun cards.
-Using ABC & 123 magnets on a cookie sheet and a Magna-Doodle board from one of our Busy Boxes.
-Rolling alphabet dice (a score from a recent homeschool conference) and racing each other to make words (the older kids loved this).
-Spelling with magazine letters.

We also enjoyed some sensory bin play:

-Colored pasta ABC/123 noodles (these were fun to put Scrabble tiles in and have the kids find the letters of their names)
-Post Alpha-bits Super Why cereal mixed with oatmeal (mostly the boys just used dump trucks and scoops and made a bit of a mess, ate some (eew), and I swept it up and tossed it out. Very fun!