Bat Activities for Preschool Students

Did you know that a single bat can eat 1,200 insects per hour and bats that don't eat insects help distribute fruit seeds and pollen? Bats are extremely helpful creatures in our natural world and make a fun October lesson plan theme. These bat centered activities will help teach preschool students about these fascinating flying nocturnal mammals.

Turn a Classroom into a Bat Cave

Have students color pictures of sleeping bats such as this one and cut them out. Tape the pictures of the bats to the ceiling. Make up stories with your students about how the bats wake up at night and fly out of the classroom to feast of mosquitoes.

Bat Comparisons

Let your students practice their observation skills with this compare and contrast activity. Print or copy a few pictures of different species of bats and make a list of all of the things that make the bats similar (bodies covered with fur, wings, ears, etc...). Then point out the differences between the bats (different colors, face shapes, wing shapes, etc...)

Create a Bat Bulletin Board

Cover a bulletin board with dark blue paper and glue on a large yellow circle to represent a full moon and scatter tiny yellow stars across the board. Help student trace bat shapes onto black paper using a stencil or bat shaped cookie cutter and cut them out. Attach the bat shapes to the bulletin board.

As an alternative, tape the bat shapes onto the classroom windows to create a fun October scene.

Eat Like a Bat

Some bats like to eat fruit and sip nectar from flowers. Set out platefuls of cut up fruit and let students pick what kind of "bat food" they want to eat for the day. If you have a supermarket with a good Hispanic section, you may be able to find a hibiscus flavored drink mix to be the flower nectar for their drink. If you can not find a hibiscus flavored drink, substitute a juice for the nectar. A gummy "bug" candy can stand in for the bugs that many other bats like to eat.

Song: Bats are Sleeping

Sing the song "Bats are Sleeping" to the tune of "Are You Sleeping?" to reinforce the concept that bats are nocturnal animals that sleep during the day an are active at night.

Bats are sleeping,
Bats are sleeping,
Upside down,
Upside down.
Sleeping in the morning sun.
Waiting for the night to come.
Then they'll fly around.
Then they'll fly around.