Last week was bat week in the classroom and the kids LOVED it! My family and I added some things to the room to make it more fun for the students to learn about bats all week. The first thing we did was transform the door into a bat cave!
First we covered the entire door with black construction paper. Then my mother and I stuffed newspapers into the brown lunch bags to make them look like rocks. I then added these black bats from Amazon to the rocks! This pack of bats was only $6 and came with 60 different sized bats! I added caution tape to the door at the end. This door setup was so simple and easy and turned out so good! I will definitely continue this for years to come during bat week 🙂
I added this black fringe curtain from Amazon in the doorway and it was honestly the kids favorite part, haha! I didn’t have any problems with it coming down all week which is a huge plus! We also hung some of the Amazon bats from the ceiling attached to fishing line. Well, Andrew hung them while Meg and I stringed them haha! This was another HUGE hit when the kids walked in and I even had a few ask me if they were real… ahh 5 year olds.
During the week, whenever I had the kids working independently on something, I would turn the lights off and let them get their flashlights out to use as long as they were working! These little flashlights were also from Amazon in a pack of 24 which was nice to have backups! The kids absolutely loved this! I had no issues all week with kids playing with them or using them at an inappropriate time.
Friday was an early release day, so you can only imagine how crazy it was! I wanted to make it a fun filled Friday with lots of bat things for the kids to do. These little bat caves turned out SO CUTE!! All we needed was paper cups, popsicle sticks and this FREE resource off TPT for the print outs! We also made bat hats and did a fun little writing activity about bats as well. I gave them glow sticks to wear on Friday while they were working on all their fun crafts! Overall the day was super crazy but it was so fun for the kids so it was definitely worth it 🙂
We also sorted these glow in the dark M&M’s this week during math and graphed the colors as a class. I found these M&M’s at Target but they are on Amazon as well. I have a confession to make concerning these M&M’s… I thought the actual M&M would glow. Sadly, I was mistaken. The wrapper is the only thing that glows and it has to be set under a light for 10 minutes, haha. This was discovered during our lesson when I was extremely disappointed none of the M&M’s were glowing. Now I know for next time, haha!
Lastly, we made these adorable texture monsters that have nothing to do with bat week but I just had to share them! We have been learning about classifying objects based on their physical properties, so we put everything we learned together and created these fun little monsters! Each child was able to choose which type of texture they wanted to use and then they had to fill out the little sheet that described all of the properties. I was very impressed with how well they did these!
Bat week in Kindergarten was very successful and I am already thinking about what I will do for next year! You can find most of what I used to decorate the classroom under our Amazon Storefront: Halloween in the Classroom 🙂 Comment below any questions you have or suggestions to do for next year to make it even better!