It's Tuesday & I'm a Little Batty

See what I did there?!

In all seriousness, happy Tuesday!!  Did y'all have the day off yesterday?!  We did.  All 3 of my boys had a "man day".  That basically consisted of a lot of bathroom jokes, lunch out at Chili's, and a trip to Home Depot.  I spent the day putting the finishing touches on my presentations for next week's Tennessee First Grade Conference.  Will I see you there?!  I sure hope so!

If y'all haven't learned about bats yet, or even if you have, I just wanted to share a few things we've done in years past and give you guys a few more freebies to add to your ever growing collection of resources.  I hope these ideas and printables/activities help you get through these next few weeks or prepare for more fun next year!!!

We loved reading Stellaluna during "bat week" and organizing our thoughts with this story map.  Stickies are my favorite to use for these types of organizers.

Since there were a lot of little problems and characters in Stellaluna, this was the perfect time to talk about main character & main problem.  We starred those on the story map to remember the difference!

I also had the kids make their own beginning/middle/end story map.  After they organized their thoughts onto their trifolds, one of my sweet moms came in to help guide the kids as they “published” their work on these bats…

We hung them {upside down} from the ceiling!

We red several non-fiction books about bats and used the info to help us fill out our Venn Diagram.

I LOVED this bat craft idea I saw on Chalk Talk.  I sat out the materials to create the bats, along with these pink strips of paper, at the writing center.  The kids used the Venn diagram as a reference to write two bat facts on their bats.  Some of my sweet little overachievers asked if they could write facts they remembered that weren’t listed on the diagram.  Well pin a rose on your nose little love…of course you can!

We learned about the differences between megabats & microbats and the kids were fascinated to learn that you can tell the difference between the two by the size of their eyes.  SO…I had different sized googly eyes that the kids could choose from to either make megabats or microbats.  Most of them made megabats!  No surprise there!

I set out a few hands-on bat themed activities at our literacy stations, too.  Click on the link below to download a word family word-to-picture match.  I cut the bats out & then cut their wings off.  The kids had to put the bat back together by matching the words to the pics that were on the wings.  {Once you see the download, you’ll understand…and if you don’t, just let me know!!}

I also created these word family bats {-ug, –un, –ut} programmed with various short u words.  I set out a clothesline and had the kids hang the bats {upside down} in ABC order.  My struggling kiddos were alphabetizing by first letter only.  My love-to-be-challenged kiddos had to look at the WHOLE word to alphabetize it correctly.  They LOVED this activity!  I just can’t believe I didn’t get any pictures!  CRAZY week!!!

  After seeing a few illustrations and real pictures of bats, I was dying to know what my kids thought…do you think they’re cute??  or creepy??  I’ve seen one up close & in person and ohmiword…I hope I never see one again.  My vote…CREEPY.  Here’s what the kids thought…

 

Can y’all believe that?!  Most of my little sweeties thought they were cute!!!!  We took this time to review the differences between picture graphs and bar graphs…first creating our picture graph.  Then we transferred all that data to our graphing sheet and analyzed it a little more.  After completing our graphs and analyzing the data, the kids made their own little {not-so-creepy} bats…and they loved it!

If you’re interested in doing this little graphtivity in your classroom, click on the picture below to download a copy for yourself!

To carry our learning into literacy, here are a few activities my kids worked on during their independent work stations.  Listening for beginning and ending sounds and distinguishing between rhyming and non-rhyming words.  Some of my sweeties who loved to be challenged used the beginning and ending sound mats to listen for ALL the sounds.  Some of them are even using the words they make in sentences!! 

 

Click on the pic below for your {free} copy!

 Here are a few fun little activities my kids worked on in their math centers from my Cute or Creepy? {7-Math Tub Activities} packet.  Here’s a little peek.

   

If you want a more detailed preview at this packet, you can check it out in my little shop.

Here's another thematic graphic organizer we loved!!  After we read a few really great books about these flying mammals, we had to add that little piece of info to the misconceptions column :)  

This was a great opportunity for me to talk about fact & opinion, too.  I know that’s a concept that will take a while for my kids to understand and develop, but it never hurts to plant the seed!!

I carried over the thematic learning in our centers and stations, too...

The rhymes with/doesn’t rhyme with bat mats are a free download I posted last year and you can grab them HERE.  The Candy Corn Cover Up and Vampire Vowel activities are in my It’s a Hands-On Harvest of Literacy Fun packet.  

Do you have any batty ideas you want to share?!  Link up in the comments!!!