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Bats are Everywhere! Our Bat Cave Day

I absolutely LOVE teaching my students about bats.  It’s a week that I look forward to every single year.  The students just get so excited and can’t wait to learn more.  This year after learning  about bats all week, I decided to transform my classroom into a Bat Cave for the day.

Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.This will definitely be a new annual tradition.  My students were so unbelievably excited.  I wish I would have videotaped their reactions when they came in this morning.  When the students walked down the hall, my door was closed and the lights were off.

Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.

The night before, I had pulled down the blinds and covered the windows with black tablecloths.  I also covered the desks and tables with black tablecloths.

Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.I also hung plastic bats from Dollar Tree onto my lanterns.

Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.

Along with some other Dollar Tree and Walmart items (plastic bag bats, mesh fabric, purple Bat lights and LED lights, etc.) the room came together pretty quickly.

Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.

It was such a simple transformation that I wondered if it would hold up to the hype of the day. (It definitely did!)  Before school started, I closed the door and turned off the lights.  I put in our weekly newsletter to have the students bring in flashlights on Friday.  When the bell rang, I opened up the classroom door and whispered for them to come in.  I had bat noises playing using You Tube on Repeat.  Click HERE for the link to the one I used.  I had this playing ALL day.  It added so much to the feel of the “cave.”

The students got out their flashlights and came into the room.  I had a glow stick bracelet on everyone’s desk along with a bat dot-to-dot activity.  The students loved using their flashlights to work.

Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.The purple lights and flashlights added such a wonderful glow to the room.

Students will love having a Bat Cave Day using these ideas and activities from Fun in First.

What activities did we complete about bats?

We learned about bats all week.  We read a lot of nonfiction books about bats and created this anchor chart to we could reference it all week.

Students will love these bat ideas and activities from Fun in First.We wrote a lot about bats, and the students were great about using this as a helper.

Students will love these bat ideas and activities from Fun in First.

We completed these Bat Flip Books, which were a great addition to our bat week.

Students will love these October Flip Books from Fun in First.Students will love these October Flip Books from Fun in First.What did we do on Bat Cave Day?

Check out the activities in my BAT CAVE CLASSROOM TRANSFORMATION packet!

On Bat Cave Day, we spent a lot of time with bat fiction using the book Stellaluna.  We also completed a lot of activities in my Bats Fun with Fiction packet.

I made these bat headbands for everyone with foam bats that I found at Hobby Lobby.

Students will love these bat activities from Fun in First.

You also HAVE to show this cute echolocation video.

It is such a catchy little tune that I found myself singing it throughout the day.

The Bat Cave transformation really didn’t take too long, and it was completely and totally worth it!

Students will love these Bat Cave ideas and activities from Fun in First.The students must have told me a hundred times today that this was the best day ever.  Some of the best reactions…”Now, this is what I call a Friday!”  “Thank you so much for doing this for us, Mrs. Southard.  It is really cool!”  “You are just like Ms. Frizzle!”

Want to know which activities we used during our Bat Week and Bat Cave Day?  Click on the links below.

BAT CAVE DAY

October Flip Books (Includes bats, spiders, fire safety, owls and pumpkins)

Bat Fun with Fiction

Nonfiction in October

FREE Bat Activities Packet

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10 Comments

  1. A study of BATS is so interesting! Thanks for sharing. However, as I click on the links to print out the papers I’m not having any success??

    1. Are you using the links at the bottom of the post? I just tried them again, and they seem to be working on my end.

    1. Ok. Let me check them again today from a different computer. Sorry about that. All of the packets are in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. If you go to my store site, and search “bats,” you will be able to find each of the items I linked to.

  2. How long did you leave the lights off in the room? I teach Kindergarten and I really think they would love this idea!!!

    1. All day 🙂 I ended up opening the blinds just a little bit later on in the morning, just to get a little bit of light in. (Some of their flashlights were dying.)

  3. Hi! What a cute tradition! Do you have any other traditions that you do with your first graders each year?

  4. Thank you so much for sharing this! We did a transformation on Halloween today and my students had SO MUCH FUN! Gotta embrace the crazy of the day!

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