Gobble Untill Ya Wobble

We spent the week learning about Thanksgiving traditions.  We talked about football games played on Thanksgiving, wishing on the wishbone, pardoning the turkey, and of course the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  

We read the story Balloons Over Broadway.  This story explains the history of Tony Sarg, an immigrant puppeteer who came up with the idea to have hot air balloons controlled by strings high up in the sky so thousands of people in the crowd could see them. 

We also read a story called Thank you Sarah, The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving.  This story was about Sarah Hale. She wrote letters to presidents for 38 years asking for a national day of thanks. Finally President Lincoln agreed and declared Thanksgiving a national holiday.  

To help us get in the feasting mood we watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and had "turkey legs" for a snack.  Ask your child what was inside the turkey leg!

 

Bat Day

 The kids were surprised with the entrance to our classroom being turned into a bat cave for bat day!  

For the past 2 weeks we have been reading books about bats.  We read a non-fiction book about Bats!

(click on the book to listen to the story)

We also read the story Stellaluna. It was fun to hear a fun story about a baby bat who lost her mother and had to live with birds.  Since we had learned about bats prior to reading the story, we could pick out the factual information that was infused into the story.  

(click the book to listen to the story)

So we started our bat day by watching the movie Stellaluna! 

After the movie we focused on the 3 types of bats.

   

To put our knowledge to the test Mrs. Wanke said we were going to dissect bat guano.  Little did we know she was playing a trick on us!  She gave us cups of chocolate pudding and told us it was bat guano.  We had to dig through the pudding to determine if the "guano" was from a micro bat, mega bat, or vampire bat by what was left over in the droppings.  If we found bones, we knew it was from a micro bat since micro bats eat insects and small animals.  If we found seeds we knew it was from a mega bat since mega bats eat fruit.  If we found red globs, we knew it was a vampire bat since vampire bats drink blood.    (bones=candy bones, seeds=sunflower seeds, and red blobs= red gummy bears)

bones = micro bat

seeds = mega bat

red blob= vampire bat

After we figured out what bat made our droppings, Mrs. Wanke told us to eat it as she let us in on her little joke!  

We learned that bats have a very strong sense of smell.  Mother bats can identify their baby by smell alone.  So, we put our sense of smell to the test.  Mrs. Wanke gave each of us a cotton ball with a scent on it.  We had to smell our cotton ball, then smell others' cotton balls to find our "baby bat" with the same scent.  This was a lot of fun.  Some of us did not like the scent of our cotton ball though.  

We had so much fun for our bat day!