All About Bats!

Teaching about Bats is the perfect way to keep the Halloween theme in the classroom without leaving Standards out or offending any students who do not celebrate the holiday.

One of my favorite books to read when doing this unit is Stellaluna.  It has so many lessons to be learned throughout the story.

This is about the time of year we begin introducing the concept of Beginning, Middle, and End of the story.. I use the above graphic organizer to have them write or draw about what happened in the story.

We also use the story in Science to compare bats to birds in our science journals.

During quiet time we watch it on Storyline Online.

Click the picture below to watch!

Of course we have to stick with the theme in our Math Journals.. so there are 5 Batty Prompts in my unit.

We order numbers (this was a picture courtesy of a family using my home school curriculum).

There are 5 total science journal prompts that surround the topic of bats.  When we talk about a new science vocab word, I like to give them the definition and have them illustrate it in their journals.

We can't forget the Vowel Bat song!!!

Click the picture below to watch.

I created a literacy center to go along with the song.

Your students will look at the bat and determine the vowel in the word (middle sound).

We do Batty Beginning Sounds as morning work, and there is also a literacy center for the pocket chart that is similar to this page.

We work on color words and reading fluently all year long.  So, I like to create a mini book to match the theme we are working on.  I use these during my small group time.  We read over them together and independently.  We also highlight color words and sight words.

A counting page: perfect independent math center.

Here are two other fun math center ideas.  

My kiddos love any kind of dice game!!!

Above is a simple cvc activity with the word family -at.

Below is a student made book activity to practice sentence structure, fluency and bat facts.

You can add the book to the adorable bat craft included in the unit, stick them in their book boxes, or send it home.

The bat craft is definitely my favorite!!  Your class can attach it to a piece of construction paper or use them on a bulletin board display.  Either way is super cute!

If you like all these ideas, you can find them in my unit by clicking the picture above.  

Since you stuck around for this crazy long post-- I'll offer this unit to the first 3 people who leave me a comment telling us something you do in your classroom that is halloweenish this time of year.

PS- Don't forget to leave your email. :)