Have you ever heard of Bat Week? It is an international event celebrated every year from October 24th to 31st. It is the perfect time of year to honor these spooky creatures that may go bump in the night. Bat Week is an annual celebration that happens to celebrate and educate the public on the roles that bats have in nature. Wouldn’t it be fun to celebrate “Bat Week” in your classroom? Here are 3 fun ideas to celebrate Bat Week at school.
I don’t know about you, but when I think of bats I normally don’t go straight to how amazing they are. For most people, they are just fun to watch fly around in caves. But there is so much to learn about bats. Bat Week helps to shine some light on these interesting creatures that are so important to the health of our environment. Every night while we are sleeping, bats are hard at work eating insects, pollinating flowers, and spreading seeds to grow plants and trees. Bat Week helps to raise awareness of the need for bat conservation.
Let’s Get Batty
We are always up for a good, fun, and educational celebration in my classroom. My kiddos always enjoy learning about bats around Halloween time. It’s such a fun way to keep them engaged in the days leading up to the holiday. There are tons of different crafts, activities, and lessons that you can incorporate to make Bat Week a real hit in your room. Here are my favorite classroom activities to use during Bat Week.
1. Celebrate Bat Week with Music and Dancing
OK – we might now have a full-fledged dance party, but you probably already know just how great songs and movement are when added to your lessons. Kick off your Bat Week lessons with a good song and dance to get your kids excited about Bat Week.
Mr. G, a Latin Grammy winner, is a children’s author and songwriter. He wrote a fun and catchy song called “Bats on the Brink.” Listen here! Your kiddos will love learning that there are over 1,400 species of bats in the world, and they are the second largest group of mammals (rodents are the first). And. . . this cute YouTube video called “Introducing: The Bat Squad” will get them excited about being proactive in your community.
2. Dive into Learning with a Bat Lapbook
Dedicate your science time during Bat Week to learning all about bats. And. . . a bat lapbook is the perfect way to do that. Lapbooks are very similar to interactive notebooks. The difference is that lapbooks are specific to a unit or lesson, whereas interactive notebooks cover topics for the entire year. Lapbooks are a great tool for hands-on learning. Students use foldables and other manipulatives to learn and document all their learning about the topic. They are easy enough to be completed independently or with a little bit of help. Lapbooks also help to build important skills like following directions and keeping materials organized.
They are a great visual representation of everything your students have learned on the topic. Your students’ creativity will be able to shine when completing lapbooks. You can include all sorts of things like charts, graphs, lists, and more.
The best part? Lapbooks truly are hands-on learning at its best. This is where you can really get into the meat of your lesson all about bats. All of your information, vocabulary words, and review topics will be stored in their lapbooks. Keep reading to see more on this bat lapbook that I use with my kids below!
Grab This Amazing Bat Resource
My Bat Flippy Flap (lapbook) resource has everything you need to host the BEST EVER Bat Week in your classroom. In fact, there are so many options provided that they won’t all fit into your Flippy Flap. So, just decide which ones work best for you and use those.
A few things you’ll get are:
- Bat Cover page
- Interesting Bat Facts
- KWL Chart on Bats
- Life Cycle of Bats
- All About Bats Book
- If I Was a Bat
- Bat Vocabulary
- Batty Adjectives
- Comparing Bats
- So Much More!
Your kids will be jumping with excitement to learn all about bats! They will explore all about bats allowing you to easily teach a variety of science and language arts standards.
My favorite thing about lapbooks though is how versatile they are. You can complete this project a little at a time with the entire class during your science block, as a full-day, deep dive activity, or even as a small group activity if you want to offer more support. No matter what level your students are at, lapbooks are such a great way to facilitate learning.
Want to take a closer look? Here’s a sneak peek inside my All About Bats Lapbook! This will give you a better idea of how you can use these activities in your room.
Digital Bat Lapbook Activities
I have a digital version as well! It is a fun, interactive, digital activity that can be included in your science lessons using Google Classrooms to teach about bats. All you have to do is upload the assignment and make a copy for each student. When they have finished the activity, have the students turn it in! Easy peasy and a whole lot of fun! This works well for technology integration in the classroom.
It can also be used for whole group teaching, which is my personal favorite way to use it. Simply display your slides on the interactive whiteboard and use them in your lesson. This is a great opportunity to open the conversation about bats together, discuss as a class, and allow students to share their thoughts. It’s also great to use as a review after you’ve completed your paper Bat Week Lapbooks.
Use Them Both!
Doesn’t having both options sound great? I know this is a must in my room! I love that I can use the digital slides as part of our lesson and students can work more independently on their paper lapbooks. If you’d like to do this too, just grab the Bat Lapbook Bundle and you’ll have the print and digital version to meet all of your needs.
3. Take Bat Week to the Next Level
Celebrating Bat Week in the classroom is a great way to get students excited and engaged in learning more about bats. Yes, you can absolutely have lots of fun learning about bats with the two ideas above. But, you can also take it to the next level by filling out your lessons with some of these “batty” ideas. You can go as crazy as you want here. You might choose a bat project with a Halloween feel or one that supports the conservation mission of Bat Week. Better yet, do both!
These are just a few ideas you can incorporate into your Bat Week plans.
Build Your Own Bat Reading Cave
To kick off Bat Week revamp an outdoor camping tent into a dark reading cave in the classroom. Hang a few bats from the top of the tent, and add some pillows and flashlights for a bat cave reading experience your kids will love. A basket filled with bat books is a great addition.
Make a Bat Finger Puppet
This Bat Finger Puppet from the Ranger Rick website is a great addition to your Bat Week lessons. Not only will add some scissor skills and fine motor practice, but students can use their puppets to retell facts they have learned about bats. For a fun technology integration, make a class movie allowing each student to share a bat fact using their finger puppet as the speaker.
Make an Origami Bat
This origami bat is a fun way to give those little hand muscles a great workout without students even realizing it. And. . . it’s a great lesson in following directions too. I would suggest playing the video and having students follow along. Stop between each step to give students time to fold. You can move through the room helping as needed. Here’s a second video option you can use too!
Have a Batty Celebration
End the week with a celebration of all things bats. Decorate your classroom with bats. You can use these adhesive bats, the bat crafts your students made, or a combination of both. Then check out this awesome bat cookbook for recipe and treat ideas made with bat-dependent ingredients. Your students will love drinking some bug juice while eating a pumpkin roll all made from batty things.
You can find all of these ideas and more on the Bat Week website.
I hope you have found some fun, engaging, and educational ideas for your classroom. Whether you choose to celebrate Bat Week or add these ideas to your fall or nocturnal animals unit, I know they will get your students excited to learn about bats.
More Fun Fall Learning
If you love the ideas in this post then you are going to love these too!
- Fun Fall Activities for Kindergarten
- 6 Engaging October Activities for the Primary Classroom
- November Activities Your Students Will Love
Save these Bat Week Ideas
Adding fun and educational celebrations like this one is a great way to get students excited about learning! Save these Bat Week ideas to your favorite science Pinterest board so you can come back and use them when planning your bat lessons.
