Monday, March 5, 2018

Bats! Bats! Bats!

It's Monday, and our topic of focus is bats! 

So how do you get a two-and-a-half-year-old interested in bats? Quite easily. Bats are cool! I started by hanging Evie upside down! I didn't have any monkey bars handy, so I held her upside-down myself. She had a fit of giggles, and then I asked her a few questions:

  • How would you like to sleep while hanging upside down?

  • What if you had to sleep all day and wake up at night?

  • Are you starting to feel dizzy? How do you think bats keep from getting dizzy when they are upside-down?
Then we flapped our arms and pretended to fly around the living room, making pinging and squeaking sounds as though we were echolocating. What, that isn't how you spend a Monday morning? Why not?! 
I then had Evie hang on to the front of me while I flapped around, explaining that baby bats have to hold on tight to their mothers until they can learn to fly for themselves. 

Next, I pulled out a real bat skeleton from my cabinet of natural curiosities, and we remarked on how delicate the bones were, why they were so light, and how the wing bones are a hand, complete with thumb. I do realize that it's weird that I happened to have a bat skeleton just laying around. It isn't even the weirdest object in my collection (but it's certainly one of the coolest!).



Here's some fun bat-related terms to research:

  • Echolocation
  • Mammals
  • Guano
  • Flight
You'd be surprised at how much a toddler can learn. I find no need to limit what we study: most subjects can be simplified just fine. Just because Evie is 2 doesn't mean she can't learn about echolocation with me. I don't want to wait until she's school age! So I round up any and all materials to help me: books, crafts, specimens, videos...

Part of it is that learning is my idea of fun. I'm a nerd and I love science and stories. So when I interact with my daughter, that's my approach. Everyone plays with kids in a different way. My way happens to be getting my child to geek out with me about a different topic every day. Each day, I wake up and think of what I want to learn about and whether I have the materials to share with Evie.  Sometimes Evie will pick the topic herself (let's study babies today, mama! Easy enough; go stare at your brother). 
So this morning, the first topic that came to mind was bats! I gathered up all the books related to bats that I could think of:

  • Bats: National Geographic Kids 
  • The Magic School Bus Going Batty: A Book About Bats
  • Eyes on Nature: Bats
  • The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That: I Love the Nightlife!
  • Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats by Ann Earle
  • Night and Day by Catherine Ripley
  • Bats at the Ballgame by Brian Lies
  • Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies
  • Stellaluna by Janell Cannon


And looked up some videos to watch:

And a craft: 

https://www.craftymorning.com/toilet-paper-roll-bat-craft-kids/


At the end of the day, my toddler climbed up onto my lap and said she found me with echolocation. And my nerd heart soared with pride.

















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