Science Week - All about Bats

We started science week with a visit from bat expert David, who told us all about bats. Such as, the different types that you find in the UK, where they live, how he finds them to help protect them and how we need to look after them Lots of interesting facts! 🦇

Ladybirds - throughout the week the children have been learning about bats through play, stories and activities. They have explored bat eating insects with rice play, nocturnal animals and bats in the role play bat cave and hung upside down in PE and on the trim trail like bats roosting. The preschoolers have sorted nocturnal and diurnal animals, and all ages have taken part in trying different fruits like a fruit bat. Some of the children played a game finding out about echolocation, listening for sounds and locating them. On Friday children made small bats and launched them with an air pump to make them fly. They discovered that wind and air made them fly.

Sparrows- have been learning the story ‘Bat learns to dance’; they’ve joined in with the repeated refrains and actions, then made their own zigzag storybook. Children explored bat challenges, such as ‘how to draw a bat’, created bat models, used their funky fingers to pick up bat pasta, made bat hats and bat biscuits. We also measured ourselves next to a Flying fox bat’s wingspan of over 5 feet! On Tuesday we learnt about echolocation; this was demonstrated with a bowl of water and then in the hall, with one child blindfolded, following the ‘echo’ of an insect, which enabled the bat could catch its prey. George Dunn also showed us his bat box. Later in the week we made rocket bats and launched them by squeezing plastic bottles. We predicted the smallest bat to travel furthest but it was the medium sized bat! Our STEM challenge was to make a flying bat. We also did a science trail and various bat art and craft over the week.

Puffins- We listened to the story Why Bat hangs upside down' which is one of the Ting tinga tales. We later discovered when making our own fact files and fact books that bats can't take off from the ground so they need to fall into flight! The children also found out lots of other interesting facts and chose how they wanted to present their information. In Geography we have been studying Africa so found out what the hammer head bat in Africa was like and compared it to the Brown Long eared bat which lives in the UK. We looked at the bats' habitats and compared them. We used different art materials to create pictures which showed the two bats and their homes side by side. We had fun making bat rockets and launching them with bottles and made our own hanging bat puppets using cups and lollipop sticks. We finished off the week with a science trail finding famous scientists to crack the code!

Barn Owls - In Barn Qwls we began the week by researching information on Bats. The children then created their own information leaflets on bats. In the afternoons, this week we made 2 different rockets types and learnt about the forces acting on an object. The children carefully drew their rockets launching and labelled all the forces making the rocket launch and bringing it back down. We also did some maths by estimating and measuring the distance the rockets had travelled.

This week we also learnt about engineering and which shape is the strongest in holding weight. The children were then set a task to create a bat shelter using newspaper, which we later tested to see which can hold the most weight. The children first planned their shelters before building them as a team! We’ve had a great Science/STEM Week and learnt lots about Bats!

Eagles
After the assembly we learnt about some more amazing bat facts and then wrote our own bat blogs about the fascinating world of bats. In the afternoon, we looked at the piece of art, ‘Flying Fox’ by Van Gogh and created our own paintings in the same style. Some of us created bat silhouette paintings, blending shades of blues and purples. Some even had a go at creating a 3D model of a bat which was really tricky. Well done for all your perseverance!

On Tuesday we investigated our bat wingspan and answered the question, how far would our fingers need to grow to be bat sized? In groups of four we measured from spine to top of head and multiplied it by 5 to find out our wingspan. We then made some bat wings to show the incredible difference! Lots of fun was had and loads of maths took place.

Wednesday was a fantastic science trail around school, answering questions about famous scientists. We also drew scientific, labelled diagrams of the bats anatomy.

We finished off the week with a Bat Assembly, where classes shared what they had done and learnt over the week