Kindergarten Bat Activities and Lesson Plan Ideas!
This blog post is filled with engaging activities to support reading comprehension. math and literacy centers, bat craftivities, bat poems, videos, and anchor charts too!
I am posting a variety of activities that will help you learn about bats in a fun way. Be sure to download your free printables at the end of this blog post.
This blog post contains affiliate links, but the suggestions are my own.
Kindergarten Bat Lesson Plan Ideas
Teaching about bats is so much fun! A bat unit is a perfect Fall theme to incorporate into your classroom whether your school celebrates Halloween or not. Here are some fun lesson ideas for your week (or two) of bats!
Bat Reading Comprehension Lessons
I may have a favorite bat book or two… or five.
I love teaching fun things like bats, but what’s better is when you can use those cool themes to teach reading comprehension skills, as well as, other math and literacy standards. Two of my favorite books to read while teaching about bats are Stellaluna by Janell Cannon and Bat Loves the Night by Nicola Davies.
Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
Here is a brief synopsis of the book Stellaluna:
Stellaluna was flying with her mother when the mother bat was attacked by an owl. Stellaluna falls right into a bird’s nest. The family of birds take her in, but Stellaluna does not quite fit in. It is a precious fictional story and a great way to introduce bats to your classroom.
Using the book, we practice making predictions, retelling the story, comparing, inferring, and opinion writing.
With our reading comprehension units, we sometimes ask students to make a prediction. We love that students can express themselves with illustrations as well as some text.
We also ask students to write an opinion. We asked them to write about their favorite part of the story.
Stellaluna Bat Read Aloud Lessons – Retelling the Story
One activity we do weekly with our reading comprehension units is retelling the story or working with text details. Students work together to put the story in sequential order.
Lesson plans and response activities for Stellaluna can be found here:
Students also made their own retelling of the book Stellaluna. These were just cut out of black construction paper and a white crayon was used to make the face. Whenever possible we like to add the retelling to a fun craft. Double fun for sure!
Bat Loves the Night
Bat Loves the Night by Nicola Davies is such a cool book. We love it because it couples narrative text with informational text. This book is filled with bat facts and would make a great resource for research projects.
Here are a few pages so you can see what I mean.
Using this story, students build their schema about bats. You will find the pieces to make this anchor chart in the free download file at the bottom of this blog post.
I love these illustrations.
Our young children continue building their schema about bats. Other lessons teach students about making connections, inferring, and visualizing. Students also connect what they know about bats and other nocturnal animals.
Lesson plans and response activities for Bat Loves the Night can be found here:
National Geographic Readers: Bats
This is a fantastic book to add to your book basket during your bat activities. This all-about bats book is a must! We use this chart to build our vocabulary chart. You can find the pieces for this chart at the end of this blog post.
Bat Craftivity
During our Stellaluna lesson, students made some of these hanging bat crafts. You can see the birds in the nest and Stellaluna is hanging upside down from the nest.
Bat Poem for Kindergarten
This is one of our favorite poems. We love using words like echolocation!
Each poem comes with a 5 day fluency plan. We sing this poem each day, but honestly… we continue to sing it all year long. That is how much we love it! This bat song is set to the tune of Five Little Ducks.
Each poem also comes with an emergent reader. Students love to sing along and color their poem book.
All About Bats Videos
Watching a few YouTube videos about bats is also a great way to learn more about these nocturnal creatures. This one has some fun facts about bats.
3 Fun Facts About Bats! | SciShow Kids is also a great video.
Literacy Skills and Center Ideas with a Bat Theme!
Here are few fun bat-themed activities for your center time! Click on the center pictures to find the specific bat activity.
Bat Life Cycle Stamping Printable Activities
In this center, students stamp the stages of the bat life cycle.
Bat Alphabet Center Activity
In this center, kindergarten students color the letters to match the color on the bat letters. Coloring is a great way to strengthen fine motor skills.
Math Skills Centers with a Bat Theme
Here are a few ideas for math centers!
in these different sets of bat printables, you will find a simple number sense activity and an addition activity.
Kindergarten Bat Activities – Classroom Snacks
I have saved the best for last! Check out these adorable bat snack ideas. When it comes to classroom snacks, you want them to be easy!
- Nutter Butter Bats from Handmade in the Heartland.
These cute bats look easy peasy
- Donut Ball Bats from Katie Harp
I hope you have a few ideas you can use in the month of October.
Grab Your Free Bat Anchor Chart Resource
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2 Responses
Hi Deedee, Is there still anyway we can get your peek at my week PDF lesson plans with hyperlinks. When I click on it, it wants to pin it to pintrest.
Hi there! YES! You I fixed the links so they are easier to get to. 🙂