I Am Bat by Morag Hood and published by Two Hoots Books is my sons absolute favourite at the minute and he has begged me to do some activities to go along with it for the blog this week. The book is a very simple story but it contains emotions, feelings and counting so there is lots that can be talked about. Bat is a very lovable character and the pictures are bright and colourful.
Activities
Make a bat
Make the cherries
Number activities
Fruit game
Quiet cherry game
Go and see some real bats
Make a bat house
Cherry and pear crumble
Fruit bat
Bat biscuits
Indoor
The first activity to go along with this book is the little bat on the photograph. We made it using a paper plate and black paper. I cut the edge off of the paper plate, cut a bat shape out of the black paper and stuck it on to the plate. The plate is only big enough to stick on the body (if you do your bat large enough) and this is quite good because it leaves the wings free and they flap when you move the bat up and down. We then stuck googly eyes on and used crayons for his face. Another activity could be to make the cherries that bat has and then when you read the story you can remove the cherries. You can incorporate numbers and you can take the cherries with the numbers going forwards first and then going backwards and this will teach your child/children to be able to count backwords. The cherries are in pairs so you could count them as pairs or if your child/children are older you can count them as individual cherries and teach them to count in twos. A final indoor activity (this could also be good for the car) could be to play the fruit game where you name a fruit and then the person after you names that fruit and they add another one and so on until someone forgets what fruits were mentioned. This is a really good game for improving listening skills and it helps with remembering things.
Outdoor
If you have more than one child then you could get them to collect large stones for the cherries. One of them sits by the cherries blindfolded and another child (or children) need to sneak up and steal the cherries. The person blindfolded gets three chances to point in the direction of where they think the person is stealing the cherries. If they point correctly then they win or they lose if they point incorrectly and have used up their 3 tries. Then they can swap over. This is a good game as people need to be quiet so the blindfolded person gets a chance to guess correctly so it might be a good game to choose if your children need to play a calmer game. Another outdoor activity could be to go and see some bats. Some zoos and nature places have bats so you could take your child/children to go and see them and they might learn a new fact or two. A final outdoor activity could be to make a bat house. If you want instructions to do it properly then there are some on the wildlife trust website or you could have a look on line and be creative and make it how you want. If there aren.t bats in your area then you could make some card ones to hang inside. To waterproof card you can wrap it in sticky tape and this will stop the bats getting wet and crumpling.
Cooking/Food
The two fruits mentioned in the book are cherries and pears so the first activity could be to make a cherry and pear crumble. We buy cheap crumble mix from the local supermarket but my mum always makes her own and then you can buy tinned or fresh pears and cherries and use hem as the filling. You could make fruit bats and use pears as the body of the bat and use cherries for the wings. You could then get creative for the face and this is a dessert that looks good and is nice and healthy. A final food related activity could be to make some bat biscuits. If you use round sandwich biscuits for the body (like Oreos, crunch creams etc.) and cover in chocolate then you can use chocolate orange slices for the wings or something of a similar shape and they will look like little bats. You could use some raisins for the eyes to add some decoration.
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