Bats, Spiders, Owls...Oh My!!!

We have learned so much about owls, bats, and other nocturnal animals.  We discovered they come out at night because that is when they can safely find the most food.  We learned that bats aren't as scary as we may have thought.  They actually help us by eating pests like mosquitoes.  I still would not want one trapped in my house though.  I wish I could find the picture of the one I actually had in my bedroom when I lived in an old, historic building in Raleigh (old, historic is my way of nicely saying it probably should not have been lived in).  I woke up at 2 am to the sound of wings flapping over my head!  When I tell the story to the kids I have a tendency to make the bat the size of the flying fox rather than the very small brown bat that it was.  I had a picture of the animal control officer pointing to it on my wall that I would always share.  The kids would always laugh at just how small it really was.  In my defense, it sounded a lot bigger just over my head. I lost the photo though and it was before I had switched to digital photos (phones on cameras...what was that?).  Boy did I just date myself!!  Anyway it gave me a great topic for writing in front of the kids!!  We practiced making connections using the story Owl Babies. It tells of 3 baby owls who are afraid when their mom is out hunting for food. Most of us had a similar story (missing a parent when they had to leave). 

Here are a few photos from our week with nocturnal animals. 

This free picture collage created with Smilebox

Photo collage generated with Smilebox

We read The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle.  We wrote about what we are busy doing in Kindergarten.    This is our tree map to sort information we learned about bats. Our Schema chart about spiders.  We try to do one of these at the start of each unit/topic.  This helps us to see what we already know (or think we know), what questions we have, and what our misconceptions are.  We did 2 really fun investigations about spiders (from D. Jump's Science unit).  We learned how spiders eat their prey and why they do not get stuck in their webs.  Ask your child to tell you what they discovered.   How stinkin' cute are these??  Don't you just love Kindergarten drawing!!  Even though I showed them step by step how to draw the Old Lady (after reading There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly) they all look different.  We used these and cut outs of the other characters to retell the story.