It's no secret around my club that Halloween is my favorite holiday. The kids know, the staff know, and even those slightly disapproving parents know (but what they don't realize is that I tone it WAY down for work). So, to help get our kids in the festive holiday spirit, I've started a tradition at our Club called the 13 Days of Halloween. We count thirteen school days (no way the weekends are going to eat up our fun) including Halloween and the celebration begins. This year, the 13 Days of Halloween start on Monday, October 15.
Each day we include some kind of fun Halloween craft or activity and at least one of our movie options is a Halloween movie. Now, I also absolutely love learning disguised as fun so this year our kick off for the 13 Days of Halloween means we're Going Batty with the Magic School Bus. For our STEM lesson we're watching this episode of the Magic School Bus
which you can watch for free at
School Tube (or if you have a Netflix account all of the episodes are available there). After the kids have watched the movie, then it's time for some physical activity. We move to the gym for Triple Play and play the
Echolocation Hands-On Activity from Scholastic. The kids love this and it requires little to no planning on the staff's part (which is a great thing this time of year!). Basically you only need a scarf and two metal spoons. The child who is the "bat" wears the scarf as a blindfold and the child who is the "moth" has the two metal spoons to clink together. From Scholastic's page:
What To Do
- Create
an open space by pushing students’ desks to one side.
- Give
each child a copy of the activity page.
- Pick
one child to be the "bat" and another to be the "moth"
(bat food). Remaining kids can be "objects" in the bat’s
environment.
- Blindfold
the bat and have "objects" stand in groups of three with their
backs to each other, each facing a different direction.
- Help
students try SEEING WITH SOUND. The bat should clap often, as it tries to
tag the moth without bumping into objects. Objects and moths only clap or
clink spoons when the bat faces them directly.
- Once
the bat bumps into an object or tags the moth, choose a new bat and moth.
- Ask:
How is this activity like echolocation? different? (Unlike kids, bats
bounce their own sounds off objects and get "sound" messages
back from many objects at the same time.)
After a few rounds of this game, we're ready to move onto the next project. We're headed to the Studio now where we'll make some batty art. We've done several different bat projects over the years, but I think my favorite is the water color bats from
My Bright Firefly. Our kids have made a whole flock of these and they hang from the ceiling in our Studio.
Now, we all know that learning never stops and so for our homework kiddos that are supposed to read everyday we've got a selection of books about bats set out in the Power Hour room.
If you're looking for a great selection of bat books, try this group from
Fantastic Learning Fun. If you follow the link you'll find a summary of each of these selections.
We always have some kids who don't really have homework, but really enjoy working on education projects. For those kids I've added a few batty things to do when you're finished projects to Power Hour. First, the younger kids can make this free printable book about how a bat grows from
Surviving on a Teacher's Salary.
For the older kids, we have a Kid's Scoop from
Scholastic Teachables. Now, this is actually titled Health Tips. Don't let the name fool you, it really is all about bats. Side note, if you don't have a Scholastic Teachables account, I highly recommend trying it out. We use projects from this site in both Power Hour and the Art Studio every week. It's the best small investment I've made all year.
Of course, there are so many other great bat activities that you can do with your kids. For Career Launch, the kids could meet a bat biologist. Now, I couldn't find one in our area (one of the perks of living in Podunk I suppose) but I did find an
interview with a bat biologist.
Are you ready to Go Batty now? I'm sure there are oodles of great projects and ideas I don't have listed here, if you have one to share,
let me know!
No comments:
Post a Comment