It's a Bird, It's a Plane, - It's a BAT !!!!

This past month the Kindergarten class had a lot of fun learning about one of the creatures of the night  - bats.  I, particularly, am not fond of the nocturnal creatures but learning about them and teaching the boys and girls about uniqueness of bats is,well, like therapy for the teacher.  The kids learned some great science words like: mammal, nocturnal, echolocation.  We learned how bats live in colonies and that bats have - fingers and thumbs!  We read the story Stellaluna and compared bats and birds - how they are alike and how they are different.  We learned there are many kinds of bats.  There are bats that eat fruit and bats that eat bugs. This makes bats very helpful and the farmers love this about bats.  We learned that there are vampire bats that live far far away and like to eat fish and lick the blood.  We learned vampire bats DO NOT live by us and DO NOT suck people's blood and turn people into vampires.  That stuff is just for the movies.  We listened to what bats sound like when they use echolocation.  We even saw a short video featuring a little brown bat and learned a song about echolocation.  The link is posted below.  You have got to check it out!  To top it off, we made a bat snack to celebrate our Brownie Points.  We used Oreos and candy - very tasty!  I hope the boys and girls learned a lot and the therapy always helps the teacher!

Your child's teacher,
Mrs. Straight

The Echolocation Song    http://www.surfnetkids.com/video/bat_echolocation_song.htm