A week on bats with a few mummies

Circle Time - We read this fabulous National Geographic Bat book that showed us many wonderful pictures of bats and told us neat facts.  One thing we learned was that the smallest bat has a wingspan of 5", while the largest bat's is 6 feet!  So we decided to measure our wing span.




Napkin Ghosts - A friend gave me some over-sized napkins.  We used them to make over-sized ghosts!  Perfect!

Science - Bat Hunt - Ms. Sara hid numbered bats around the basement room.  Since we know bats are nocturnal, we knew we'd need a flashlight to find them.  The kiddos took turns finding the bats and reading out the number, then Ms. Sara would share a bat fact with them.

 

Origami Bats - Ms. Sara folded a bunch of bats for the kiddos to decorate.

Tp Bats - Classic, but oh so cute!

The older kiddos painted their first...

Finger Puppet Bats - A favorite from last year and back by request.  Just cut the fingers off of a pair of stretchy black gloves, felt for the wings and googly eyes.

Clothes Pin Bats - We also created these bats who can hang by their toes just like the real ones.  The kiddos painted the clothes pins, I cut wings from craft foam, they picked out the head and googly eyes and I glued it all together with a hot glue gun.

 
Science - Echolocation - We chatted a bit about finding food in the dark (that would be tricky).  Bats have very good eyesight, they also use echolocation (sending out sounds to bounce off things) to find their food.  We tried our hand (or ears rather) at it and found we aren't as good as real bats.

When it was daytime, the bats quickly flew to their caves to sleep...

Flying (running) With Our Bat Wings - I made these wings from 30 gallon black trash bags with ties.  Just fold the bag into fourths, scallop cut the bottom.  Slit up a side seam cutting through the drawstring (you'll have to strip the seam off.).  Then cinch up the draw strings to make a bat cape/wings.  Hard to see in this photo, but super cute and quick and easy.

Mummy Dogs - The kiddos helped me roll the dough into snakes and wrap them around a hotdog to create a mummy.  We made some goofy shaped bread sticks with the extra bits.

Here are our yummy mummies...

Toilet Paper Mummies -  I told the toddlers we were going to be silly and make mummies using toilet paper.  They thought that was really silly.  But what's extra funny is that I realized half way through the project that they didn't know what a mummy is.  What clued me in was this question:
"Is this the Daddy and that's the Mommy?" 

Spoon Mummies - I created a mummy form using a plastic spoon and craft stick halves.  The kiddos wrapped them up and gave them eyes.