Science Club: Flying Mammals

It was my turn to teach at Science Club this week. We are still studying mammals, so I chose to teach about flying mammals, aka bats!

I started out by reading the book I am a Little Bat by Marta Prims. And I told the kids to pay really close attention as I was reading to the things that were true about bats. I stopped to explain the big words like, hibernation, nocturnal, and echolocation.

When we were done with the book, I gave everyone two pieces of paper. On the first piece was a chart with two columns, one column was labeled Facts, and the other was labeled Myths. On the second piece of paper were a bunch of different statements about bats. The kids were to cut out the statements, and decide if they were a fact or a myth, and glue them under the right column. Here is Lincoln's:

Then we did an activity to teach the kids about echolocation. I cut a piece of large poster board in half and made two large cones that looked like megaphones. I had two kids stand about six feet apart facing a wall, but kind of angled towards each other, so that the two kids and the wall were making a V, and gave each a megaphone. The first kid pointed his megaphone towards the wall and whispered semi-loudly into his megaphone. The second kid pointed his megaphone towards the wall, and put his ear up to the megaphone. The idea is that the sound will bounce off the wall and back into the second megaphone. You can hear the whisper really loudly. It's cool. And the kids loved it.

My kids and I had such a good time, that I think I am going to do a few more bat activities with them on our own this week. I have an art project in mind, and a few more books I want to read to them. :)