Our Day in the Dark!

We've been talking about bats this week! We've read lots of books about bats, learned interesting facts, and created some bats of our own. One of the most intriguing ideas to us is that bats stay awake all night and sleep all day-> they are nocturnal animals.

Books about BATS

our list of bat facts

measuring with bat manipulatives

sequencing the events of the story

Today we had our "Day in the Dark"-> we did our center activities with the lights off, imagining we were nocturnal and having school at nighttime. This was a great chance to have sensory centers and let our learning shine!

Just before turning out the lights, we made some glowing flubber (or gak to some) to play with on one of the light tables. Then we all put on a glow bracelet instead of our usual center necklaces, and turned out the lights!

mixing up the flubber and playing with it on the light table

 

waterbeads glowing under the black light

This was probably the favorite center- glow writing with highlighters under the blacklight. Hopefully the kids won't be disappointed when all their pictures don't glow in the dark at home the way they did under the special lamp!

Lite Brite-using pegs and letters

Glitter playdough on the lightbox is new and different!

using our Letter Builders to make letters and shapes on the light box

We did it all under the light of the moon and stars!

After centers, we all came back to the rug to play a game together with a bunch of glow in the dark bugs. We learned this week that one way bats are important to people is by eating lots and lots of bugs. So, we used our grabber tongs to see how many glowing bugs we could "catch" in a short amount of time. Our best bug catching "bat" caught 8 bugs- pretty good, but not as amazing as the real little brown bat that helps us out by eating 1000 mosquitos in an hour!