Spiders and bats in the classroom, oh my! You’ll know my love for combining informational and non informational texts in a fun and purposeful way. I tend to plan the entire school year around themes and these themes revolve around seasons, holidays and current events. Fast forward to the month of October and we see bats and spider decorations everywhere! So let’s spend a week learning about bats and spiders! And don’t forget to download your FREE Where is Spider Positional Word Book at the end of this post!
Books about Spiders and Bats
Using books to teach is a must when teaching little learners. Not only does it help the learner to connect to the information, but it is so important for students to hear fluent oral reading. I like to read and share informational books, so the students can then extract information to help them in labeling and/or writing. But don’t forget those non-informational books too! Stellaluna is one of my favorites! You can check out more of my favorite spider and bat books here.
Organizing Information on Bats & Spiders
One of my favorite ways to organize and ‘show’ the information we are learning is to create an interactive anchor chart. A simple anchor chart on butcher paper or on chart paper works just fine. But I love to use my creativity to create an anchor chart that resembles our topic/theme…like this bat anchor chart. I used butcher paper and cut out a bat. I used sentence strips to create parts-of-the-bat labels. Then we read an informational book about bats. Afterwards we talked and reviewed the details we learned. Then it was time for the students to get a chance to attach the labels to the bat anchor chart. Afterwards I hung the bat anchor chart in the writing station, so students could refer to it during their independent label-the-bat activity or to use in their writing.
Hands On Learning Spider Activity
This is a cute hands-on activity that can be used for a variety of skills. Simply put, it’s a paper plate that I’ve punched holes in around the perimeter. For this specific activity, I chose a handful of letters and wrote the upper and lower case letter around the plate. I threaded some yarn through the plate and taped it to the back of each one. Students then were able to thread the yarn through the holes and try to match the upper and lower case letters correctly. This activity could be created for each student or 3-4 for a repeat station activity or for small groups. You could also use this for numerals and dots, etc.
Spider & Bat Digital Activities
These Boom Cards are the perfect way for students to have meaningful practice with spiders and bats digitally! This would be great for technology stations or for remote students. This digital activity is full of fun, whimsical bats and spiders but is also covers parts of spiders & bats, what they eat, their homes, characteristics and more! You can click the image below to check it out or find it here.
Download FREE Where is Spider? Positional Word Book
Hi! I am so confused because I keep trying to get your freebies and I keep having to resend you my email but I just keep getting sent to the form to fill out my email again! ??♀️ I love your work and was excited for the spider positional book and the pumpkin number order plus all the other stuff! Maybe this one will work?
Hi Laura, I checked my subscriber list and it shows that you have been subscribed since July. But this Spider Positional Word Book has a direct download link within the post. No email or subscription required. Scroll towards the bottom of the post and it will say Click to Download Your Freebie Here. And you can also click on the image. As for other freebies, you will need to open the weekly newsletter and use the Teacher’s Lounge Freebie link to access the freebies. You can email me at kindergartenchaos2@gmail.com if you have anymore questions.