Izzie, Mac and Me: Bat Activities

Friday, December 9, 2011

Bat Activities

Izzie has been learning about Bats for a few days and reading the book, Stellaluna.

Review from Amazon: Attacked by an owl, Stellaluna (a fruit bat) is separated from her mother and taken in by a bird and her nestlings. Dutifully, she tries to accommodate--she eats insects, hangs head up, and sleeps at night, as Mama Bird says she must--but once Stellaluna learns to fly, it's a huge relief when her own mother finds her and explains that the behavior that comes naturally is appropriate to her species. With a warm, nicely honed narration, Cannon strikes just the right balance between accurate portrayal of the bats and the fantasy that dramatizes their characteristics. Her illustrations, in luminous acrylics and color pencils, are exquisite. The appealingly furry, wide-eyed, fawn-colored bats have both scientific precision and real character; they're displayed against intense skies or the soft browns and greens of the woodland in spare, beautifully constructed (occasionally even humorous) compositions. Delightful and informative but never didactic: a splendid debut.

She completed the following bat activities from Peace, Love, and Kindergarten. I love finding free printables to use with Izzie!

Reading, writing, and coloring the bats the correct color. I purposely did not color the bats the correct color, as I wanted Izzie to read the color words.

Beginning Sounds Activity

Izzie is doing really well determining the beginning sound of a word, so to challenge her, I had her do the ending sound. A few pictures, I had to "change"...such as, instead of mouse, she did "rat"...for spider, she did "bug", and for grapes, she did "fruit".

Fruit Bat Counting...each bat had a certain about of fruit on it...I did color the fruit on each bat, so Izzie could color the bats on the handout the corresponding color. This was great practice for writing her numbers.

To add a little twist to this activity...I had Izzie choose two bats...

(Sorry for the horrible picture!)

After choosing two bats, she colored half the bat one color and the other half the other color, then wrote the corresponding numbers above each half. Then, she worked the simple addition problem and wrote the answer in the box. She had cute little bat counters (Target dollar aisle), if needed.