Going Batty!

Topic: Two dimensional shapes

I can't tell you how excited I was when I realized I would be teaching on October 31st... Halloween! I wanted to incorporate the "holiday" into my lesson planning. For the past few weeks, we have been talking about identifying two dimensional shapes.We worked on identifying them, counting their sides, and creating them with Play-Doh.

It was obviously time to create a geometric bat out of circles, squares, triangles, and rectangles! I found a geometric shape worksheet from MathFour.com, and I used the geometric bat template for younger kids. I made copies of these worksheets and had students color in the shapes with a black crayon before cutting them out. Cutting is a big deal in kindergarten, so the kids were excited to work on that! 

I put this little visual up on the Promethean Board while students were working on their bats. I included a step-by-step diagram to put together the bats, which was really for all of the teachers in the room, because we needed to be on the same page when helping students! I also included a fun fact about bats to read to the students, because who doesn't love fun facts? I wasn't sure if they had seen what a real bat actually looks like, so I thought that would be a great visual to add to the board.

First, we colored and cut out our pieces. All kinders love to cut things out, but our rule is to have them place the objects in the correct positions and have them checked by a teacher before gluing them down. They do not like to wait at all. 

I decided to create an outline for students to follow, and I made plenty of copies for all students to have one. Without a template, this activity could be easily been too overwhelming for my kindergarten students. 

 

I loved walking around the room and watching students glue their bats together! They all did a wonderful job following directions and they were able to complete this complex task!

Once the bats were all glued and put together, I hot glued little googly eyes onto each one. I loved that we completed all of the components of the bat project before the Halloween party in the afternoon. Students were so happy to take them home and bring them to their parents!