Going Batty for Bat Day
So I am finally getting around to finishing my Bat Day blog post! (I know...a year a later, please hold the applause! Ha! But really... better late than never right?) Let's jump right in!
Let's talk about the importance of creating an environment of study for your kids. When I did this lesson I got a lot of, "I would NEVER have time to do all that." "Why go through all that trouble of staying late when your kids won't even appreciate it?" "I wish I had time to do fun things in my classroom....*says sarcastically*"... Oh yes. Let me be the first to tell you, that if you're a teacher, you have ONE job to do and that is to teach those kids. Whether it be through worksheets or room transformations...you do you boo. If you're one of those teachers that are excited and pumped to try this room transformation, I'M SO EXCITED FOR YOU! You can go ahead and skip to the next paragraph! If you are one of the teachers who are completely skeptical and need encouragement, THAT'S OKAY. It's completely normal to feel weird trying something out of your comfort zone but I applaud you for even taking the action steps of reading this blog! You could feel out of your comfort zone for many reasons that we won't get into specifically in THIS blog, but know you're not alone, and it's your classroom, no one else's.
Okay let's get down to business shall we? First: what is Bat Day? If your school doesn't celebrate Halloween and instead you focus on studying bats or pumpkins, this is for you! We "became" bats for the day and learned about what they ate, how the listened, what climate they love to be in, and ultimately just all the fun facts about bats! It's taking the whole day to really celebrate learning and researching through living it out! When we celebrated Bat Day last year, it was a half day so some of the activities I go through may not fit your needs, but there are always more things you can add to your day! This is just what I did for our specific class!
BEFORE BAT DAY: 1)Send out a note to your parents (secretly is best so the kids are surprised when they get to school that day!) I sent a note home asking the parents to dress their kid in all black head to toe (this was specifically easy for my class at the time, however if your class can't participate in that and they wear uniforms it won't affect the lesson!) You could also do brown and talk about different species of bat based on color if you have older grade levels! If you really want to show some effort, Amazon has this adult women's bat shirt too! https://www.amazon.com/HEARTISIAN-Womens-Sleeves-Casual-Black-2XL/dp/B07FFWLJ9Y/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1540253035&sr=8-6&keywords=bat+shirt
2) I also included in the note to bring a flashlight (or 2) and that their child will be using it for most of the day. I had a great turn out for this and it helped a lot! You can also buy $1.00 stretchy headlamps from Walmart if you really want to invest in the lesson.
3) Cover the windows in either black butcher paper or cheap black table cloths from Walmart. I also bought black table cloths for our tables! I also "constructed" a cave out of our door: see picture below!
DECORATIONS: The best part about this is Halloween stuff is all out at Walmart and Dollar Tree! I bought dollar bats to hang from the ceiling, and bat lights that were purple to give a bit more light in black out room. I also changed all my lamp light bulbs to purple lights to give the effect of a dark cave. (So let's clarify...all the light I had in my room that day were from the purple lamp lights, the string light and the kids' flashlights.) Trust me, it's not too dark. I also invested in a fog machine. YOU NEED ONE!-- Mostly because they're cool and you can use them for other room transformations too! This really made the whole scene come alive! I highly recommend it!
FIVE SENSES: For my room transformations I have always made it a huge point to include all five senses into our day! For seeing I had the fog and the dark room mostly because I can't really recreate night vision ha! However you may can download an app to where you can take pictures with a night vision filter! For smelling I had the fog, which gave off a very particular scent and I also left my windows cracked open over night (which at my school I was allowed to do) to give off that morning dew smell. As for hearing, I had bat noises playing from a Youtube video on repeat for the ENTIRE day. Ill try to link it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMXpHaHuqFc
As for taste, this one was a little unconventional, considering bats eat mosquitoes and bugs, so I bought Bat Brownies instead for fun!
Okay, now that you kind of have a gist of what you will need and what the room will look like, let's get into the nitty gritty shall we? What are the kids ACTUALLY learning through all of this!? For my first grade class it was more focused on research, exploration and we tied it into our writing lesson for the week!
For morning work I had the kids come in and we made bat head bands to bring our whole outfit together! I'm honestly not sure where I got them from but Teachers Pay Teachers has a ton of free bat downloads so I would check that out before you start planning your own Bat Day! After our bat headbands we began a bat vocabulary page where they put the words in alphabetical order after we discussed what the words meant (considering we were going to be doing these activities involving the specific vocab!) - Also from tpt.
SCIENCE: Because our day was only a half day we went right into science and began our experiment which was learning all about echolocation. We started with the echolocation song on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAvoz_ofoeo
and then I handed out materials: one tin or foil pan and two paper towel rolls. For this activity I modeled and discusses how it works: Basically one person holds the tin pan while two other students each hold a toilet paper roll. One will talk into it pointing to the tin pan while the other holds his/her roll up the their ear to listen through vibrations. The kids LOVED this activity and it gets them up moving and discussing about the vibrations in their ear.
The next activity was more for fun! I split the groups to where there were 6 kids in each group and gave each one of them a paper that had a ton of little mosquito pictures on it.(Found on tpt for free!) The object was to count the mosquitoes, cut them up and put them on our sheet by 100's. The first group to finish got to eat lunch with me! (You can always change the reward). This activity may not fit your students, but it definitely worked for First grade!
On the particular day we had lunch in our classroom due to the half day, so during lunch I played the Magic School Bus- Going Batty episode! If you have indoor recess this would be a good resource to have! Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5gZkf1p_LM
This was ultimately our day! If you are planning to do this on a full day you can always, ALWAYS include a writing assignment, or a creative writing assignment! Some awesome topics would include: "The day I woke up and became a bat", "Help! My sister turned into a bat", "I'm trying to convince my parents to let me get a pet bat!" Don't forget about Stellaluna too!
I hope this helped! If you end up doing bat day, PLEASE tag me in your pictures so I can see! I always love seeing how teachers turn room transformations into their own! If you have any specific questions, don't hesitate to ask! You know where I am! Until next time....
