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!

Monster Math

 

This adorable book inspired our MONSTER MATH for this week!

Our focus has been memorizing facts of 10.  This is so important since our whole math system is based upon groups of 10. If your child knows their 10 facts they can use that to solve all kinds of problems.  In fact, we will be using facts of 10 for all kinds of math strategies this year and in future grade levels.  We start every math lesson with this great song.  

In our guided math groups with week we used our monster work mats and googly eyes to solve facts of 10! Some of us started using our knowledge of facts of 10 to solve a missing addend in a fact of 20!  (example: 7+____ = 20)

We also played a math memory game called FEED MY MONSTER! This was a memory type game. We would tell Mrs. Wanke to flip one of the cards to reveal a number.  We would first have to tell Mrs. Wanke what number would pair with the number she turned over to make 10.  Next, we would tell Mrs. Wanke a different card to turn over.  If that number was the correct number to make a 10 with the first number we flipped, we got to feed the monster!

Yummy....FACTS OF 10!