Science Sunday: bats

After reading Christy of Superheroes and Princesses made this super cool bat.  I knew we had to make it.

Mainly because I had a bunch of empty toilet paper rolls sitting in one of the bathrooms.  But, I digress.

So, I made an executive decision to go back in our book to bats, and learn about them for a little bit, rather than continue for this week learning about insects.  Hey, I’m the Mom, and I knew I’d have at least one very happy kid.

And I did.

One of the big things we learned is that bats use echolocation to navigate around.  And when they “hear” something that sounds like food they start making even more clicking sounds to find it.

So, we, and by we I really mean the boys, primarily Batman; set up an obstacle course for our bats to navigate.  He took his “traps” (I think that’s what they were, maybe) and created an obstacle course of crumpled paper for the bat to navigate.

It was so cute watching them pretend to hear the clicks and say, “Oh no something is here, better go another way.”

Then we talked about how scientists studied bats for a very long time and figured out how to use their echolocation for our boats and submarines to use sonar.  Then they had to find a submarine toy and a boat toy and act out how they use sonar.

They also learned most bats eat insects.  So they cut up a bunch of little pieces of paper and said that was the insects for the bath to eat, then they stuffed it inside their bats.

There are some days I just love to sit back and see how their minds work.

And, if you’re needing a nonfiction bat book to read, this is one of the many we’ve checked out over time from the library.  It’s one of our most requested animals to find out about.

Thanks to Phyllis from All Things Beautiful for pointing out I forgot to put in the linky this week (and by the way if you head to her blog she’s starting up a cool mystery series for your kids to do too today, I’m gonna check it out later to see if my kids are ready for it).