Batty Bibliography!

When I begin building a unit, I like for the foundation to literature. Here are titles that I have found useful during our bat unit:
Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
Stellaluna : A Pop-Up Book and Mobile by Janell Cannon
Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats (Let'S-Read-And-Find-Out Science, Stage 2) by Ann Earle, Henry Cole
Bats by Gail Gibbons(Illustrator)
Bats Around the Clock by Kathi Appelt
Bat Jamboree by Kathi Appelt

Here are other books that are good resources:
Night Creatures (First Discovery Books) by Sylvaine Perols
Bats : Shadows in the Night by Diane Ackerman
Bats : The Amazing Upside-Downers (First Books - Animals) by Phyllis J. Perry
Bats (Zoo Books) by John Bonnett Wexo, Linda C. Wood
Bat's Surprise (Get Ready...Get Set...Read!) by Kelli C. Foster, et al

Predicting and graphing

At the beginning of the bat unit, we began with a KWL chart and recorded what kids knew about bats. I discovered that what several of the children "knew" about bats, amounted to be myths and wives' tales! Keep this chart going throughout the unit and add new discoveries about bats periodically.

Before reading Stellaluna have students decide whether or not a bat is a bird. Give them small slips of paper to write either "yes" or "no". I made a cute chart with a nest on it. The "yes's" went on the nest. The "no's" went outside the nest.

Read Stellaluna aloud to your class. Stop at various points through the story and discuss what is happening and predict what will happen next.

After reading Stellaluna review with children whether or not a bat is a bird. Create a Venn diagram comparing the distingishing and common characteristics. If you are a real artist, it would be cute to draw a large bird with one wing extended to the middle and a large bat with a wing extended to the middle and overlapping the bird's wing, but two overlapping circles will work, as well.

Midnight Math

The largest bats have a wing span of nearly 6 feet and the smallest bats have a wingspan of just 3 inches. This fact (and many others) can be found in the book, Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats (Let'S-Read-And-Find-Out Science, Stage 2). (When reading this book to your class, you may want to find the pages that contain the information that you are emphasizing that day or paraphrase the book and show the pictures since it is heavy on information. You will want to guage this based on the attention span of your students.) Then using a video data project, the whole class viewed this diagram of a bat to see the various parts of a bat. To follow up this information we made bats representative of the largest and smallest bats. I demonstrated measuring and drawing a bat to the specifications by sketching the largest one as the students observed. I measured a piece of brown bulletin board paper using a yardstick and discussed the process as I went. Then I cut the paper to the right length and folded it in half to make a crease in the middle. Then I drew the bat's head and body in the middle of the page and extended the wings on either side to the edge of the page. I traced around the outside with a black marker. Groups of students worked cooperatively later in the day to add details to the bat and cut it out. Following the demonstration, each student received a strip of paper three inches long and drew their bat to represent the smallest bats. (If the students had been more experienced with measurement, I would have given them longer strips and allowed them to measure the three inch strip from the longer one.) We displayed the large bat in the hallway with the small bats all around it.

Read aloud Bat Jamboree. This humorous fiction selection will provide the opportunity to practice counting to 55. If your students are ready to work on some addition, provide manipulatives and reread sections of the story. Have the students work out these stories with their manipulatives. (Okay, I have to share this...my favorite part of the story is at the end, when the jamboree is not over "'til the bat lady sings"! This is really a cute book!)

Bats Around the Clock will provide the opportunity for students to read analog clocks. After the first reading, have the kids follow along with individual small clocks, making the times stated throughout the story.

A Batty Breakfast

We did three activities to accompany learning about what bats eat. We learned that a single brown bat can eat 600 insects in just one hour! In order to help the kids understand just how many 600 is, we divided into 6 cooperative groups. Each group had a paper plate and a sheet I created on the computer with 100 mosquitos on it. (To create the sheet, I simply went in to my Microsoft Publisher program and found a graphic. I placed it on my document. I made it very small and copied and pasted it until there were ten rows of ten mosquitos.) Each group's task was to cut out all 100 mosquitos and glue them to the paper plate (with tiny drops of glue!). When every group was done we reconvened as a class and lined the paper plates up and counted by 100's. We displayed our work in the hallway under the heading "A Batty Breakfast". This activity was adapted from another online bat unit on Mrs. Vig's Theme Page.

An edible activity was making "Bat Fruit Salad". Since many tropical bats eat fruit, we made a salad out of some of the fruits they might eat. Our salad contained bananas, raisins (they were really supposed to be dates, but you do what you have to do and improvise) and mangos. Most of my students had never tasted mangos, so this was a new experience for them.

Finally, we put bats into perspective, relative to how they fit in with the ecosystem by creating a food chain. We discussed the various things bats ate and also discussed what would eat bats! The students made a paper chain with eight links. Then I gave them a half sheet of paper with a flower, a moth, a bat and an owl drawn on it. They cut out these pictures and glued them in order using every other link on the chain they had made. Students were permitted to draw other animals or insects for their food chains if they wished, as long as they left the bat in it and the sequence was correct.

Writing and rhyming

Earlier in the school year, we read Down by the Bay, which is published by The Wright Group. I used this format to write a story frame for the students to complete with rhyming words:
Down in the cave
Where it's very dark
Upside-down
The bats all park.
They fly all night
They sleep all day
Did you ever see a bat
(Fill in the blank with something that rhymes)
Down in the cave!
In a small group format, we brainstormed a list of words that rhymed with "bat". Then the students thought of what the bat could do with the item. An example might be: ...Did you ever see a bat play with a rat?... Since it was early in the year, I scribed for the children and then they illustrated their pages. We compiled all of the student pages into a class book to enjoy for the months to come.

Phonemic awareness

A fun way to practice beginning consonant sounds is with the "Batman Theme" which you hear playing in the background as you read. Here is what it would sound like if you were practicing /b/:
bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu;
bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu;
Batman!
Choose different consonant sounds (cu...Catman! or hu...Hatman! or zu...Zatman!)
If you want to procede to having students associate the sounds with the letter symbol, simply make a set of alphabet flashcards and hold up the letter. The class responds with the correct version of the song. Another, more difficult, variation would be to make two sets of each letter. Let students draw a letter from a pile (have just enough matches for the number of students) and hide it. When you say "go", each student begins quietly singing the version that corresponds to the letter they are holding. As they sing, the students walk around listening for their matching partner. When the partner has been idenfied, students should stop singing, check to see if their letter cards match and sit down together. Game ends when all students have located their partner. (If it is a nice day, you might even want to go outside to play this.) These ideas were adapted from a similar idea from the Kinder Korner Bat Unit.

Bat Habitat

We made the entryway of our classroom into a bat cave. We used brown bulletin board paper as the base. We wadded it up and then flattened it back out to give it some texture. Then we used plastic "Wal-Mart" sacks and dabbed various shades of gray and black and earth colors of tempera paint on to brown paper. We added a touch of silver glitter so that it would look like there were some crystals on the wall. Then I cut the paper to fit around the inside of our entryway. We folded origami bats and hung them upside-down from the top of the cave. Here is a photo of our bat cave:

Click on the photo to see a larger image!

Bat Crafts

Fold origami bats! You need two squares of construction paper, one twice as large as the other. Fold the large square diagonally to make a triange. Place the triangle in front of you with the base down and the point up. Put one finger on the middle of the base and fold the left bottom point towards the top. (This forms one bat wing) Repeat on the right side. Fold the top corner down slightly to form the bat's feet. Fold the small square in the same way, except make certain that the left and right bottom corners are to the left and right (respectively) of the center and that the corners extend past the top (bat ears). Turn this over and draw a bat face. Staple the head to the body. Display by hanging upside-down.

Bat Webquest for Kindergartners

Before the students use this site, you may wish to briefly demonstrate how it works using a video data projector or to small groups at the computer. Students must understand internet basics such as using links and using the back button to return to a previous page to successfully navigate this site independently.

Echoloction

Introduce echolocation with this on-line animation which illustrates how this works. This link is included in the Bat Webquest for Kindergartners. Then head outdoors to play a game that deomonstrates echolocation. Find a open area and look it over carefully for hazards. Remove any potential hazards and have the students form a circle. Choose one person to be the bat, place him/her in the middle and blindfold him/her. Then choose another student to be an insect. The insect moves inside the circle. The bat says "echo" and the insect replies "location". Based on listening for the insect's replies, the bat tries to tag the insect. When the bat tags the insect, allow two more children to act out the parts. To make the game more difficult, allow several children to be insects at the same time. You may notice the similarities to the game "Marco Polo" upon which it is based.

Bat Links!

Here are some links about bats that you may be able to use use with your students, but they are primarily for your information:

An online article about bats that "reads" to your children. (Included in the Bat Webquest for Kindergartners)

Bats, Bats Everywhere!
A very complete resource all about bats with age-appropriate information (Several pages from this site are included in the Bat Webquest for Kindergartners)

Bats:A Collection of Science Information
(Several pages from this site are included in the Bat Webquest for Kindergartners)

First grade Bat Unit

Bat Quest!
This site is intended for slightly older children, but has some neat ideas that could possibly be adapted for use in kindergarten or done as a class with a video data projector.

Bat Slide Show!
This could be used as a whole class activity with a video data projector. I think that it is too dependent on text to be used independently by kindergartners, although the navigation is simple enough.

"Going Batty!"
Kinder Korner Bat Unit

Bat Quiz
You could use this online quiz yourself as you prepare to teach the unit, or possibly use it as a whole class activity if you had the class vote on the answers.

The Bat Year
A month by month guide to a bat's life. This could be used as a whole class presentation using a video data projector. The site could also be printed out and cut apart to create a sequencing and matching activity. Simply mount the photos and the names of the month to tagboard to make cards. Then number the backs of the cards 1 to 12 to make the game self checking. This would provide practice with squencing and reading the names of the months.

Bat Collection
(more bat photos)

Zoo Views - Bat Cam
(watch roosting bats in action)

Another bat unit

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