Chicka Chicka Boom Tot Bag

My next tot bag is based on another favorite book of ours - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault. I told myself that I was only going to create tot bags for the board books that I own but this book was truly begging for me to create something. So here is the big reveal.....Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tot Bag....

I could have went on and on with activities for this book but I had to stop. Before I write what is in my bag, I want to make sure that you know - in no way am I suggesting teaching the alphabet to toddlers. I just wanted to expose my little one to letters in a fun way. I do not expect him to master the alphabet with these activities. All files and links will be at the bottom of this post.

The idea behind a tot bag is to have everything contained in a ziplock bag or rubbermaid box. I plan on adding letters to our rainbow rice bin - our bin is bigger than shown but I wanted to include this activity in my post. I have small magnetic letters as well as the big ones shown. I will add them to our bin for Kaleb to search them out. Underneath it is a puzzle that I found in my files. I printed it, laminated it, and glued magnets onto the back for our cookie sheet magnet board. Having it magnetic will reduce the stress of the puzzle moving around while assembling. The puzzle comes from Alphabet Learning Tree Printables but I am unable to find a link. If you know where I got this (I would love to give the proper credit) or would like the puzzle, let me know.

I made palm tree for a bowling game. I already had a set of bowling pins but this could easily be made with milk jugs or water bottles. I wanted to create these tot bags with whatever supplies I had on hand. I love the idea of using an actual coconut for the bowling ball. This will probably be added later since I am going to use these in the upcoming school year.

I printed a palm tree for our cookie sheet. Kaleb will play with the magnetic letters to retell the story. I also made magnetic letter puzzles from fun foam. I only made the letters of his name. I did not want to overwhelm him with all of the letters of the alphabet. These letter puzzles are only two pieces and each letter of his name is a different color.

These are rag letters on a smaller scale (about 3 inches each). I have made rag letters before but my original ones were large. I wanted to make a small set that could fit in a ziplock. Again, I only made the letters of my children's names (I had to make both or it would have caused problems), These are relatively simple to make and they only took me less than an hour to put together. We will use these to play games. I will probably add other letters later.

And my absolute favorite item of our tot bag - a homemade felt palm tree. I stressed over this part of the project. I knew I truly wanted a palm tree of my own with letters but we don't have teacher stores here and I was sure I didn't want to spend the money. I searched and searched for a pattern but could not find one so I created my own palm tree by guessing. I used all materials I had on hand to make this - it isn't perfect but I love it. The tree is basically a cylinder - I wanted to taper it at the top but didn't. I filled it half with lentils that I had in the kitchen and stuffing. The lentils make it sturdy since I am making these bags for a toddler. I cut letters from felt and added velcro to the back to make them stick better. Again, I only cut out the letters of my children's names but my older child has already asked for the other letters (guess what I am doing tonight). I also thought to use the rag letters I made, which is possible as well (so you only have to make one set of letters). I hope you enjoyed my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tot Bag as much as I have enjoyed making it. My wish is that these encourage you to make your own for your children. If you have any questions, or ideas for another book based tot bag, I would love to hear from you. I have more tot bags in the works....next one The Napping House by Audrey Wood. If you have any suggestions, I would love them.


Chicka Chicka Boom Boom links

Kiz Club  here is where you will find the upper and lower case alphabet puzzles in both color and black/white.

Kiz Club you can find the printable palm tree and the letter templates that I used for the magnetic cookie sheet. I used these letters for my felt tree.

Making Learning Fun there is so much here for this story - play dough mats, clip cards, etc... I used the palm tree template to make my bowling game.

Happy Together this is tutorial for the rag letters - she has upper case, lower case and numbers too. These are easy to make, if you need the template for my letters which are a smaller scale, let me know. I can't find the link so I don't feel right to post it.

Em Culver I found this picture of a homemade palm tree after I created mine. Hers is so much better.

Hostess with the Mostess this is where the palm tree bowling idea came from.

Other Chicka Ideas not included in the tot bag

Dmiller 317 this is a Chicka Chicka glogster, an online poster with activities to do an a mini movie. I really want to try to make one of these. They look cool.

Lightning Bug Lit has a Chicka Chicka sensory bin.

Sweet Serendipity created a paper towel tube palm tree for retelling the story.

The Teacher Express make a felt palm tree for a felt board instead.

Over the Big Moon has two part printable alphabet puzzles.

My Pinterest board for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (for some reason I haven't been able to add the interest button on my blog, still working on it though).

Monday's Discovery

A friend revisited - Kaleb is becoming more attached to his friend than ever. He loves to have his mouse when he sleeps and he carries it around during the day. I know that I will have to bring it when I go to the states this year, I just hope he doesn't lose it (until he is ready to). Here are a few more pictures of his special friend.

He is making sure his mouse eats with him.

He is feeding his mouse breakfast. Isn't that sweet? Hope your week is full of special friends.

Sonlight Bible Tracers weeks 10 - 18

I just finished the bible tracers for Sonlight Kindergarten (Core A). Some of these verses were pretty long. It could be too much writing, just use these if you want handwriting practice for your kindergartener.

I also finished the bible charts. You may have to trim the sides for them to fit into the mini pocket charts. I hope this doesn't give you too much of a problem. If I have time, I will create these charts using a smaller template. As always, if you find any mistakes, please let me know. Hope these are helpful to you. Please click on my Sonlight Kindergarten page.

Sonlight Kindergarten

Goodnight Moon Tot Bag

Another one of our favorite books in this house is Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I recently acquired this book in board book form at a book sale here. We already own the paperback version. I love the board book - they are practically indestructible....I say practically. My son loves to chew books and even though the edges get frayed, we can still read them. My next tot bag is based on this book. I am having fun creating these tot bags and I hope that Kaleb will have fun playing with them. These are the activities that I planned....

I started with a moon and star button snake that I made. I cut simple shapes of moons and stars from yellow and orange felt. Then I sewed two large buttons on the end of yellow ribbon. Kaleb will practice his buttoning skills by placing the shapes on the ribbon. We can also practice patterning with this activity. I made a story cube using graphics from the story. We can use this to find the characters in the story, practice rolling a die etc... I made some mini bottle caps with moon and star stickers. Kaleb will drop these into the bottle for fine motor skill practice. (He loves this activity.)

I made a mini clothesline for him to match the mittens, which are just cut from fun foam. This clothesline is just two skewers stuck into play dough. (I don't have plaster of paris but it might be something to invest in if we are to do other clothes pinning activities.) I found this idea here. An added bonus is that it is portable. I liked the idea from SomeWhat Simple to make a "stress ball" so I added some play dough to a red balloon for Kaleb to squeeze and shape. And, of course, Goodnight Moon would be complete with out a red balloon to play with.

I found a cute moon printable which I printed onto yellow paper, laminated, and punched holes into it for a sewing card. This is a difficult activity for Kaleb but with Mommy's help, we can do it. I also added some pompoms to pick up with tongs and practice spooning ping pong balls (they kinda look like moons- I didn't have white ones) into a ranch container. If this is too hard to do, I might switch to spooning the ping pong balls into bowls. Hope these inspire you to make your own literature based tot bags. My next bag in the works.....Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Goodnight Moon links


Pre-K Pages this is where the idea for the portable clothesline came from.

SomeWhat Simple homemade stress ball for lots of fun.

The Adventures of Bear not pictured here but I plan on creating a Goodnight Moon Sensory bin for Kaleb. She made a great one.

Harper Collins I used this picture for my story cube.

Mother Lode she made story blocks using a book that was damaged. This is a great idea - puzzle blocks but I didn't have a damaged Goodnight Moon book.

Monday's Discovery

Kaleb loves putting things into things. He will spend some time doing this activity with great precision. This day, I gave him a bottle and the pom poms that I made with magnets.

This was a good activity for him and, as you can see in the background, his friend is never far behind.

Sonlight Bible Verse Tracers 1st 9 weeks

I have been slowly preparing for Sonlight Kindergarten (Core A) for the next school year. I wanted to give J some handwriting practice and I made some bible tracer sheets for the first nine weeks. Now, we are using Core A from a year ago, not the newly updated one. I am not sure that makes a difference but just in case. If you find any errors, please let me know so I can fix them. I made these late one night so it is possible. They are not perfect but I think they will do the job. How do I use these tracers? In order not to overwhelm J, I usually allow her to do one line a day or if there is  more than five lines, I break it up among the week.

I also created mini pocket chart printables for each of the bible verses. These should fit into the mini pocket charts that you can get from Target before school. I like the idea of having the verse visual so we can practice it often. Again, I used the Sonlight Kindergarten (Core A) and the verses written in the manual. Again, if you find mistakes, please let me know. I hope these can be helpful to you. I am working on the next nine weeks verses to be posted at a later date. I uploaded the documents into Google Docs - sorry each of the verses and charts are separate pdf's, I don't have a program that can combine them yet. I would love to know if these were helpful to you. Also, if you have any more ideas of printables that would be helpful for the Sonlight Kindergarten, please let me know, maybe I can work them out. Please visit my Sonlight page to find the files.

Sonlight Kindergarten

Hungry Caterpillar Tot Bag

This is another one of our favorite books around here. Although we don't have the board book version of this classic, I definitely want to share this with my toddler. I am preparing for the new school year, and I am working on activity bags for him. My first tot bag was Brown Bear, Brown Bear. These bags will hopefully help to keep him happily occupied while I work with J. Here is my Hungry Caterpillar Tot bag.

My goal with these tot bags is to use materials on hand to create them. This makes it easily accessible for other to recreate them as well. These are the activities I planned for the book.

I have caterpillar lacing. The caterpillar is two green pipe cleaners wrapped around each other. I cut out some fun foam fruit and punched a hole inside it. The caterpillar with eat "through" the fruit. We can use this to pattern the fruits eaten by the caterpillar and this is also a fine motor activity. I made fruit bean bags for some bean bag fun - gross motor activities. We will use these to play all sorts of games.

I have a butterfly magnetic activity. Kaleb will match the butterfly with the magnetic pom poms that I made. I also printed out a sizing activity - put the caterpillars in order from smallest to largest (or vice versa).

This is probably my favorite activity that I made. It is a hungry caterpillar clank can that I made from a large Ranch dressing bottle. I covered the bottle with green paper and created the face. I printed the foods the caterpillar ate and glued them to milk caps. Kaleb is going to love this, he just loves putting things inside things. (The antennas are probably not going to make it after the first play but he will still be cute.) The only thing I didn't make in the kit is the butterfly finger puppet that I bought at IKEA awhile ago. Everything else in the tot bag is made or printed. I am looking forward to sharing this great story with my son. Now, all of my activities fit into a ziplock bag and are awaiting for the day I pull them out.

Hungry Caterpillar links

The Great Green Room this is where I found the idea for caterpillar lacing.

Making Learning Fun the idea for the clank can came from here, this site also has tons of Hungry Caterpillar printables.

Enchanted School House the bean bags idea came from here, she has a great hungry caterpillar bean bag game, it was too big to fit into my tot bag but I may still create this.

1plus1plus1equals1 Hungry Caterpillar Tot book, free printable, her stuff is great and she always shares, this is where I found the caterpillar sizing activity.

All Join In another clank can idea using a pringles container, this is where I found the link for the food printable I glued to the milk caps.

Childcare Land there is an extreme amount of free stuff here, just keep scrolling, I found the butterfly magnet pages here. She has other versions of these as well as everything else you can think of.

Yellow Mums I truly wanted to make this but I have some other tot bag ideas that I wanted to get to before the summer starts, so it will have to wait. I love the idea of have a puppet or large caterpillar to act out the story.