We're Batty for First Grade!

Last week, we had a three day mini-unit on bats. It was my first time truly straying away from Open Court Reading for a bit and it was so much fun! I hope I can somehow find a way to make time for some specific thematic units, they are much more exciting to do!

Anyhow, we started the unit with a quick read of last year's Scholastic News on bats (I kept all the big book versions). We learned how to draw our own bats and then labelled all the body parts. The students also had to write one or two sentences about bats underneath their bats. Now, I am not a good artist at all. But I'm pretty good at following directions! Thank you Tadpole Blue Studios for those directions! :)

I'm pretty proud of myself if I do say so myself! :)

Some student work:

The next day, we read Stellaluna. Except, I didn't read it to the kids, actress Pamela Reed did! If you have not discovered Storyline Online yet, definitely do check it out! There are lots of videos of actors and actresses reading picture books. They have quite a good selection too. My class really enjoyed watching the video. Afterwards, we created a double bubble map comparing and contrasting birds and bats. [picture to come soon, apparently I forgot to take one]

On our last day of our mini-unit, we did some bat writing! I used a mixture of different bat writing products I found online. 

We filled out graphic organizer and then did our informative writing piece using the provided templates from Fun in First. 

We also wrote a bat poem, reinforcing rhyming words, provided by Richi Reynolds.

And finally, we made a quick and simple but cute bat craft! Templates provided by A Cupcake for the Teacher. 

All that hard work resulted in this...

The pumpkins on the bottom were an activity the students did with their 5th grade buddies.

Just in time for Halloween! I promise I'll have some pictures of the writing and other stuff up tomorrow. I filed all the stuff that didn't get posted on the bulletin board (I let the kids choose which one they wanted to post) today and didn't even think of taking pictures. I'll get it done tomorrow, I promise! 

Speaking of tomorrow, tomorrow is Halloween! What are YOU going to be for Halloween? :)