Going a little "Batty" here....

Our third graders at Trail spent some time learning about the mysterious mammal, the BAT. We started with our springboard story of Bat Loves the Night, a story told in narrative non-fiction form. It’s a story about a mother bat and her evening escapades. The students learned many amazing facts such as: that the pipistrelle bat is one of the smallest bats, about the size of your thumb; that bat babies are called batlings; and that bats eat a variety of things, including 600 mosquitoes an hour!

Bat Research

​Our third graders enjoyed doing some extension activities using technology with the websites Cute Bats, Types of Bats, Scholastic: Soar with Bats, and Wonderopolis. The students researched the topics of why bats hang upside down (bats will still hang upside down even after they die!), bat vocabulary, types of habitats, unusual facts about bats, echolocation, bat videos, pictures, and assessments to test their knowledge of what they learned.

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A wanted poster for a particular bat using traits that we learned about in our story.

​One of the students' favorites was when Mrs. Moss' class and my class created Bat Flyers for a STEM (science, tech, engineering, and math) activity. 

I found this idea online from Smart Chick's Bat Flyers. We changed it a bit to fit our classes, but it was super cool!

​The kids really got into it.

​Making of the bats!

They chose different types of paper and a paperclip to create a bat that would fly the furthest. We held “Bat Trials” to see who could design a bat that would soar!
“Hanging” with bats was a blast!

​Bat Practice!

Final bat trials!