We started yet another short week by learning about bats.  How’s this for a strange schedule: Full Day Monday, 1/2 Tuesday, No school for Kinder Wednesday and Thursday (1-5 have 1/2 days) and a Full Day Friday!  Madness!!  It’s all due to Parent/Teacher Conferences this week!  I am excited about them–I have all my report cards done, on the computer for the first time ever before Fall Break!! 🙂

Today, we began by writing a Morning Message where I left some blanks for letters to be filled in (picture tomorrow-I left my camera at home today!)  One of the words was “bats”.  We then learned a new pocket chart poem, “5 Little Bats Hanging Upside Down”.  Our wikki sticks were found in a bunch, and could not be used, so we had to temporarily switch to post it flags to underline and find letters.

We then read a Big Book called, “5 Little Bats Flying Through the Night”.  If you haven’t read it, it’s a take of on 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed–very cute!  Great for teaching rhyming words! 🙂

We then made a Predictable Chart titled, “The bat…” and since it is a short week, everyone in the room completed their sentence today.  Tomorrow, we will do touch read and cut up sentences.  Friday will be class book day!

The children were very interested in the idea that bats are nocturnal and so we ended up making a list of animals that are nocturnal and those that are not–we had some great ideas (hamsters, racoons, owls, gerbils, hedgehogs, and a few, like the octopus that we had to do some research on to figure out when they slept)

During our science time, we started by watching an episode of the Magic School Bus about sound (and it just so happens–haunted houses!).  After wards, we got out our Lakeshore Sound Tub and talked about how some sounds are low because of small vibrations and how some sounds are high because of many vibrations.  The children then spent all day sharing with me how they made different sounds using various materials in our classroom!  They loved it!  We also talked about how bats “see” by using echolocation and how that is like sound.  We discussed the ways that bats might use small and large sounds to figure out where they are at.  It was an interesting disucssion! 🙂

I also added a new magnetic word family tin to our Word Work Station (you can see the previous post about them here, scroll down after all the spider things).  This one is the -at family (you know to go with bats!)

Does anyone have any great ideas to spice up ABC station?  Anything you use that your kids love?  I have some games and other things I would like to add, but thought I would see what everyone else is out there doing! 🙂

Tomorrow, during our 1/2 day—more bats!  I’ll take pictures tomorrow and get them posted!

Kristen 🙂