Bats

 

We all became quite wild about bats during this unit! We spent a whole week (or so?) studying them. Our favorite activity was making these cut-out paper bats to decorate the house with, which seems so simple, and it was, but somehow en masse these bats became so dramatic, we thought they were one of the best decorations we'd ever made!

We got the general idea here and used her basic templates, but we soon graduated to making our own shapes, adding ears, and varying other little details. We liked making them in slightly different sizes too. I invested in some heavy waterproof paper (Graftix 12x12 craft plastic, to be precise) so we could hang them outside, though we actually ended up hanging them all in the living room. But I was still glad to have the stiffer paper since I am hoping to be able to reuse them for multiple years.

We loved this Bat Documentary

A little explanation of echolocation

The little kids loved making bats too. Gus was fascinated with the way you could fold a paper in half, cut out a shape, and then unfold it and have a bat! He made a bunch of his own bats with the cutest little faces.

Tiny bat! Daisy made this one for him, I think.

Ziggy really did well at making them, too. We had the littler kids use regular black construction paper (and white scratch paper too!) to make theirs, because the plastic was a little harder to cut. And I didn't want to waste it.

Downstairs bats

Upstairs bats. Sam helped us put them up so they would look like they were all flying out in a huge cloud from a cave somewhere. Junie made a nice round moon for them to fly past. I loved how they looked! I can't wait to put them up net Halloween (which will actually be NEXT year from when I'm writing this…in 2025…because we will be in Quebec for Fall 2024!)