This week's book of the week is a fun not-quite-Halloween non-fiction book...National Geographic Kids: Bats.
This is a great book to use during the month of October (or anytime really) with older students
. You know, the kids who are "too cool" for some of our fun Halloween stories. Here's what I like about it...It's loaded with tons of facts and information about bats and real photographs:
You can use pretty much any page in the book for working on WH- questions, summarizing, sentence formulation, etc.
There's a page about Bat Myths and truths:
This past year I was asked to administer state testing for the first time. I noticed that some of our speech kids have difficulty with True/False questions. This page would be a great way to practice that skill!
There are fact cards that summarize key vocabulary (Tier 2 and 3 words) from the story. You can cut these out, but I would recommend making a color copy as there is a page on the other side.
I love the National Geographic Kids series and often find these books in the Scholastic Readers and book fairs.
Here are some of the activities I'm using to accompany this book:
First, we're using this organizer (Bats are...can...have) to summarize the information from the story. And here's a fun paper bag bat craftivity that can be used for following directions. You can also cut a mouth and have students feed their articulation words to the bat. And here's another bat craft that can be adapted...add vocabulary or articulation words (pictures or written words) to the streamers and you have a take-home project that can be used for carryover!
I wanted a faster paced game to get more trials in some of my sessions, so I created this bat themed activity:
Essentially, you place all the cards face down on the table. The child takes a turn completing a task, then draws a card. If they get a bat, they keep it. If they get a ghost, they return ALL their cards to the center of the table. The player with the most points (or bats) at the end of the game is the winner!
You can find this activity in my TPT store.
What are your favorite bat-themed activities?
