Bats lesson plan

Nature School, December 12, 2011
Bats!

Welcome song

INTRO:
-What are bats? Bats are mammals, like us!

-What are bats good at? Bats are really, really good at hunting at night. They eat HUNDREDS to THOUSANDS of insects every night.

-Where do bats live? They live in old buildings, caves, hollow trees and roof spaces.

PRETEND PLAY:
Let’s pretend to be bats! Let’s stretch out our long arms, and flap them up and down. Now, we use our voices to sound like bats. We have really good ears. Let’s make bat ears! (Give each child a piece of construction paper, roll it up into a cone, tape it, place the small open end up to ear and listen to the sounds of the forest. Ask the kids to be very quiet for a few minutes. Listen- can we hear better with these big bat ears?)

SONGS:
Bats Are Sleeping
(Tune: Frere Jacques)
Bats are sleeping,
Bats are sleeping,
Upside down,
Upside down.
Sleeping in the morning.
Waiting for the night to come.
To fly around.
To fly around.

5 little bats
5 little bats went on a flight
by the light of the moon one night
Mama bat said squeak squeak squeak swack!
but only 4 little bats came back.
4,3,2,1
No little bats went on a flight
by the light of the moon one night
Mama bat said squeak squeak squeak swack!
and 5 little bats came flying back!


-Some people think that bats are blind. Bats are not blind, but they do hunt during the night when it is hard to see. So they use something called ECHOLOCATION. Has anyone heard that long word before? ECHOLOCATION means that they listen to the echo of their own squeaks bouncing off the walls of the caves or trees or other objects. By listening to how far away the echo is, they are able to fly around without crashing into things. They are also able to catch insects using echolocation.

Let’s play a game!
1. Ask students to stand close to each other in a circle
2. Select one child to be the bat
3. Blindfold the “bat”
4. Select four students to be insects and give them each a rattle
5. Have the bat say “beep”
6. The insects respond with a short rattle
7. The bat repeats beep and the insects repeat the rattle until found by the bat
8. Select a new bat and new insects

Bat, bat, who has my bat? Game
Have one child in the middle of the circle close his/her eyes. The other kids pass around a bat. When he opens his eyes he tries to guess who has it.

Craft-
Egg carton bat