Making Bats for Spooky Learning

When I sent away for the Canadian Wildlife Federation’s free Wild About Bats package a few months ago, I sincerely wondered what I would ever do with it.

The tiny person was not in any way interested in flying spooky creatures at that point and, much like the snake one I also sent away for, the very cool bat poster and booklet of bat facts got tucked away in my “For Future Use” file that is about a closet tall and wide right now.

Then, the other day, I got a super fun e-mail from CWF that had a great Halloween Card full of wolves, owls and ravens. But, it was the bats at the end that our daughter went absolutely bananas about.

There are plenty of bat-like creatures floating around our heavily Halloweened house and the kiddo has been dancing around, flapping her arms and even making up bat-like songs for the last few days.

So, I thought while she may not get all excited about the bat fact portion of it all, we’d whip out our bat gear, learn a few things about our flying friends (bats are amazing) in Canada and give her a reason to love it all in that we made a big, giant mess out of the dining room crafting up our very own bat mobile.

Even if you don’t have the CWF gear, this project is tons of fun.

Start out at Hinterland Who’s Who and its Bats page to get a whole shwack of great information about bats in Canada. You can also check out Canadian Bat Resources for places to go and find out about the different species that inhabit different regions in Canada.

The cool thing about the CWF Wild About Bats poster is that it gives you the names, drawings and habitat location for all of the different bats throughout the country. So, we counted up the bats on the map and made a plan to make a bat mobile with all of them on it.

First, my husband made a bat template from half a sheet of construction paper and used it to trace out the rest of the bats, cutting them in two piles as to not have to cut them all out one at a time. Then, we (meaning I) wrote the names of the bats and the habitat location on the different bats. I took a needle and thread and threaded the string through all of the bats, leaving lots of give in the string. I then tied the bats off one by one, at different lengths.

After that, we took a metal clothes hanger (plastic is probably smarter for younger kiddos) and went to town hanging them on it. They totally look like they are flying all over the place and it was a fun, silly craft that took about one hour total including the bat lesson.

So, all you really need is the Internet, construction paper, a pen, scissors, a needle, thread and a hanger.

Then, voila, you have a bat mobile.

Spooky eduction at its finest.:)

Tags: Animal Watching, bats, Creative Parenting, family, Free, Halloween, Inside Fun, Kid-Led Learning, Kids, Learning, Our Big Earth Media Co., Rainy Day Survival Guide

Category: ARTS & LITERACY, Kid-Led Learning, Nature's Classroom, Science