Ideas for Bats and Letter I

Mamie compiled these:

Bats Are Sleeping
(Tune: Frere Jacques)

Bats are sleeping,
Bats are sleeping,
Upside down,
Upside down.
Sleeping in the morning.
Waiting for the night to come.
To fly around.
To fly around.

 Bat Cave
Using large cardboard boxes or tables and blankets, make a bat cave. Let your child use it for dramatic play or for reading books about bats.

Bat Chips
Using a bat shaped cookie cutter, cut flour tortillas into bat shapes. Lightly brush both sides of each bat shape with oil. Place tortilla shapes on cookie sheet and place in oven. Broil, flipping chips once when they begin to brown. When brown on both sides, sprinkle lightly with salt or a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.

Night and Day

Make a sign for night and day. When you hold up the night sign, have children pretend to be bats and fly around. When you hold up the day sign, have children find a place where they can lie down and place place their legs up on a wall or other surface to pretend to be sleeping bats.

Bat Sense of Smell Experiment

Stellaluna’s mother uses her sense of smell to identify Stellaluna when they reunited. Many bats leave their babies (pups) in a nursery when they go out hunting for food. Because so many bats live together, a mother bat often has to use her keen sense of smell to find her pup amongst hundreds or thousands of other pups.

Place a cotton ball in six different film canisters, each cotton ball scented with a different scent such as oil of cinnamon, vanilla extract, lemon extract, mint extract, oil of cloves, and witch hazel. Remove the top off an egg carton and place the carton on a table. Have six children sit around the egg carton. Write on masking tape children’s names and tape them to the bottom of canisters. Tell children that they will be pretending to be mother bats and that the canisters are their babies. The egg carton represents the bat nursery. Blindfold children to represent the dark cave. Have children remove the lid from their canister. Give children a few moments to become familiar with their “pup’s” scent. Then, leaving lids off, have children put their canisters in the egg carton nursery. Have children imagine that they are going out to hunt for food.

One at a time, ask children to return to the nursery to find their pup. Once they have found their pup, they should remove it from the nursery. If a child cannot find his/her pup, ask him/her to wait until the other children have found their pups and then try again. It is possible that another child may have chosen their pup. If so, encourage him/her to choose a remaining pup and be ready to describe how its scent differs from his/her pup’s scent.

Have children remove their blindfolds and look at their pups. Have them discuss how they found their pup (sense of smell and position in nursery) and why they might have the wrong pup. Ask how real bats find their pups (sense of smell, position, and hearing).

Bat Finger Puppet
Bats are familiar figures when the leaves start to turn and Halloween is just around the corner. Your child will enjoy learning about bats by making this fun bat craft and singing the bat song.

	What you need: Bat printouts White pencil Black construction paper Wiggly eyes Stapler Scissors
What you do: Print bat pattern on heavy printing paper and cut out. Let children color it or use a white pencil to trace the bat shape onto black construction paper and cut out. Cut a strip of craft paper and staple one end to the back of the bat. Push strip a little bit together to make a loop and staple the other end of the strip to the bat (see picture below). Let children slide a finger through the loop to play with their bat puppets. Sing the following song together:

Movement

Recite the following rhyme together with children and make movements together.

Flap, flap, flap little bats,
Flap, flap, flap little bats,
Flap, flap, flap little bats,
Early in the evening.

Additional Verses:
Clap, clap, clap little bats,
Dance, dance, dance little bats,
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle little bats,
Soar, soar, soar little bats,

Sleep, sleep, sleep little bats,
Early in the morning.

(Have children pretend to sleep)Stellaluna

Stellaluna by Janell Cannon is a charming story about a fruit bat whose world is turned upside down. After reading the story to your child, discuss with your child how birds and bats are different and what it means to be a friend.

Bat photos online

Echolocation Game

Before playing the game, explain to children that the ability of animals to locate objects through the use of echolocation. Bats send out sound waves using their mouth or nose. When the sound hits an object an echo comes back. The bat can identify an object and can even tell the size, shape, and texture. Most bats use echolocation to navigate in the dark and to find food.

Choose a child to be the “bat.” Blindfold the child. The rest of the children will play the role of “insects” (bat food). They should spread out randomly around the bat within the designated boundaries. Bat calls out “beep, beep.” The insects respond with “buzz, buzz” as they walk around the area. The bat continues to call out and the insects continue to respond while changing positions. The bat tries to tag an “insect” by listening for the sounds they make and moving in the direction of those sounds. A tagged “insect” must go sit in the “bat cave” (designated area) until the next round. The last person tagged becomes the new “bat.”

 Insect Collage

Submitted by Karen

What You Need:

• Contact Paper
• Construction Paper or Tissue Paper

What You Do:

• Cut the contact paper in the shape of an insect (butterfly, ladybug, etc.) Let you kids put the construction paper or tissue paper on it and make great collages

Make icicles. You can make them from paper or aluminum foil and hang them in the edge of a book case or door. Or you can make Popsicle icicles by freezing koolaid or juice in the freezer.

Ispy

Insect I's

Cut large letter I shapes out of heavy paper. Set out inkpads and fine-line felt-tip markers. Have the children press their fingers on the inkpads and make fingerprints all over their letter shapes. Then let them turn their fingerprints into insects by adding eyes, legs, wings and other details with the felt-tip markers.

~Totline Books, Alphabet Theme-A-Saurus

Inchworms

Submitted by an Unknown User

What You Need:

• cotton balls
• egg cartons
• google eyes
• pipe cleaners
• construction paper
• paint
• glitter, any other material that you want to use.

What You Do:

• Have your children make inchworms by cutting an egg carton lenghtwise. Then have your children use paint to decorate the inch worms and use the other materials for added details.

Design an Insect

Submitted by J. Smith

What You Need:

• Pipe Cleaners
• Popsicle Stick
• Feathers
• Football Shakers
• google Eyes
• Construction Paper
• Glitter

What You Do:

• After talking about insects, and looking at insect pictures. Give the kids all of the materials and let them design their own insect. You will be amazed what great insects your kids will come up with

Initials Hat

Submitted by Susan

What You Need:

• Paper
• Glue

What You Do:

• Cut construction paper in the shape of a hat and then give each of your children different collage materials (colored paper pieces, macaroni, beans, buttons, etc) then let your children glue on their initials with the materials (like the initials on baseball hats)

Insect Habitat

Submitted by Tina

What You Need:

• Paper
• Paint, or colors, markers

What You Do:

• Let you kids design their own Insect Habitat (Bee Hive, Ant Hill with tunnels, Spider Web, Cocoon). Then they can draw the insects in.

Pass the Ice

Submitted by Juanita

Play just like hot potato only with an ice cube. When the music stops clap for the person with the ice.

Sticky Ice

Submitted by Fran

Put a piece of ice in a bowl of water (should float on the top) give your children a string and have them try to pick up the ice. They will not be able to do this. Then have them lay the string gently across the ice and put salt over the ice cube. Slowly count to 10 and presto the ice will stick to the string.

Quick Melt

Submitted by Nancy

Fill several containers with water and freeze them. Take them outside and put winter salt on some and not on the others. Ask your children which one they think will melt first. For added fun add food coloring on the top of each. The one with winter salt will melt away into a neat pattern.

Ice Man

Submitted by Frances

Fill three balloons with water (one big, one medium, one small). Let freeze overnight. Peel the balloon off and stack the balls (use salt between to help them melt and stick together. Now let your children clothe him, put a carrot nose, stick arms, etc.

Icicle Painting

Draw a thick line of glue across the top of a black piece of construction paper (with the paper turned landscape style). Pick the paper up and let the glue run down the page. Sprinkle with irredescent glitter. Let dry.