Science - Bats (How to celebrate Halloween without celebrating Halloween!)

Halloween can be a spooky and fun, however many schools are getting rid of the label Halloween and in some cases not entertaining the holiday at all. My school is one of them.

Even if we are not allowed to decorate for the holiday in the classroom, I wanted to still keep this time of year fun, memorable, and light for the students.  I decided, if we are not allowed to decorate for Halloween, I can still get around that by doing a unit on something that many relate to Halloween, but take out the scary and turn up the learning. Writing down ideas, such as pumpkins, bats, skeletons, ghosts and owls, that are synonymous with Halloween. I went through the process of elimination as to what would be most appropriate for my age group and Bats it is!

Crafts:

- paper tube bats  http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/mbat.htm

Hang them from the ceiling and voila! Decorating for science project - not Halloween.  ;D



Books:

- Informative, non-fiction

- fun, fiction, can use as a compare/contrast

- informative and fun









OF COURSE, I must have some sort of cross-curriculum, interactive visual to guide my students through our bat unit.

- Display board; $2 Michael's, with coupon
- Velcro: left over from other projects
- Pictures: print on home computer
- Lamination: school

Display board addresses labeling, interactive guessing with what they can eat, as well as adding rhyming into the mix because it is so important in Kindergarten curriculum.

When we take away the stigma of bats being thought of as scary, especially in regards to Halloween, the students become enthralled with learning about just what bats can do because they are mysterious creatures of the night.

Just for fun, we ended the unit with a trip on the Magic School Bus! 

Video - episode, Going Batty!

As a child, this episode helped me truly understand what echolocation is and my students now comprehend it better than the first graders because of the visualization presented in this episode. 

After we set up a safe obstacle course and went around the class using our "echolocation" to try not to bump into chairs. Bats are so interesting, they are not scary, and it is perfect to teach around Halloween so that we can decorate and celebrate without actually doing so for the holiday.

We also did our own version of something I saw on pinterest years ago with pumpkins:

- counting pumpkins
- roll-a-pumpkin game