This is one part of a Caves Unit Study intended to be done before (or after) visiting Inner Space Caverns or another cave. This study uses One Small Square Cave by Donald Silver as the main text. It also uses the Junior Cavers Workbook which you can download for free from the National Park Service Website, and various other free resources and activities. You can read the intro and find other sections of this unit here.
I'm in no way affiliated with Inner Space Caverns.
These pages may include Amazon affiliate links which can earn me commission.
Read "Seeing by Hearing" Pg 22 - 23
NOTE:
While this is a short section, if your child is interested in bats you
may want to spend a couple days on extended reading and activities. Choose the activities that work best for you.
DISCUSSION QUESTION:
- What are some things that make bats so well suited to live in caves?
ACTIVITY IDEAS:
1. SIDEBAR: Listen Closely/Echo...Echo...Echo - Pg 23. Do the "Listen
Closely" activity now and save the "Echo" activity to do later while
visiting a cave.
2. Read the
Hanging Around With Bats Texas Wild and do the activities.
3. Do page 11, 14
and 15 of the
Junior Cavers Workbook
4. The Mexican Freetailed Bat is the Texas State Flying Mammal. Read the short article
A Year in the Life of a Mexican Freetailed Bat or the free printable storybook
Frankie the Freetailed Bat.
5. INNER SPACE PREP: I was curious about the temperature in the cave, and whether bats in the cave migrated like the Mexican Freetailed bat, or whether there were other bats who stayed there year long. Brandi Clark of Inner Space Caverns gave me this excellent answer.
It
truly is 72 degrees at Inner Space Cavern year-round with up to a 98%
humidity rate. On blazing hot days or opposite chilly winter days - the
cavern remains a constant 72 degrees. It remains the same temperature
due to the average ground temperature in this area. Neat, right?!
In
our cave, we have Eastern Pipistrelle bats (also known as Tri-Colored
bats) who find comfortable refuge in those temperatures. These are
solitary bats, unlike the Mexican Freetails and do not migrate.
So, for an activity you could also look up Eastern Pipistrelle bats to learn more about them.
6.
FIELD TRIP: You can go bat watching right around town. Here are some good places to find bats in Waco and surrounding area.
- Cameron Park Zoo has Jamaican Fruit Bats
(Artibeus jamaicensis) in their Brazos at Night exhibit. These bats
use echolocation (unlike many fruit bats) and sometimes live in caves. (Learn more about them here or here.)
- After dark, I've spotted bats at the Walmart on Hewitt Drive. They
will swoop in and grab insects congregating near the lights.
- If you don't mind going a little further, Austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in North America. (March - November) Learn more here or print guide here (the printable guide has what the bats are doing each month).
- Find a guide on more places to view bats in Texas here.
7. Build or Install a Bat House. You can find
a guidebook on how to make your own bat house a list of certified Bat House Vendors here. There are also various bat house design
here, or you can buy a
pre-made bat house or
kit.
8. 7 science activities you can do related to bats
can be found here.
9. Use this
infographic to learn about bat anatomy.
10. Make an
origami bat (or a
simpler one here, or
this bookmark).
11. Various
bat crafts.
12.
Bat dot art.
13.
Bat Unit Study and Various Other Resources.
14.
Various Bat Resources.
15.
Even more resources.
ARTICLES ON TEXAS BATS:
VIDEOS:
Slo-Mo of Bat Using Echolocation to Find Water
All About Bats for Kids
Oilbirds (cause they were mentioned too)
RELATED LEARNING:
Learn about blind people who use echolocation to see. (Yes, you heard that right...there are people who are blind are learning how to use echolocation! Those who have previously been sighted says it's comparable to regular vision only without color and in a more limited range).
The Boy Who Sees Without Eyes
This video contains one error. It says this is the ONLY person who
does this, and there are actually many blind people who
use echolocation to see. But I thought that since the boy was a teen
and this video was shorter that kids might enjoy this one.
How a Blind Man Sees With Sound This one goes into slightly more detail. But no kids in the video.
LONGER SOURCES
Older kids might enjoy learning about this in more depth. Here's two good longer resources on this subject:
Blindness No Obstacle to Those With Sharp Ears (Audio Podcast)
TED Talk: Teaching the Blind to Navigate the World Using Tongue Clicks
BOOKS:
There are SO MANY BOOKS on bats at our local libraries, both fiction and non-fiction....so many more than I feature below. These are just the ones I read with my child (and a few that I didn't but seemed too cool not to share).
TEXAS BATS (Fiction and Non-Fiction)
Batty About Texas
It's a fiction book about Bo the Mexican free-tailed bat. Haven't read it, but wish we had cause it's about Texas bats! It's recommended for age 4-7. You can find it at Waco Library.
Unfortunately, both of the non-fiction books I originally highlighted are no longer carried at the Waco or Hewitt libraries. But they have a number of other selections now. I thought I'd still share about these because my son loved them.
Amazing BatsThis book, which we picked up a garage sale, has fun facts and trivia about bats and lots of great pictures. My son asked to read it over and over and over and over and OVER AGAIN. (Seriously, this was our nightly bedtime story for MONTHS). Recommended for kids age 6 - 11.
A beautifully illustrated book about a year in the life of a brown bat. It's sort of on the side of narrative non-fiction, if I remember. Recommended for ages 6-10. Available at Hewitt Library.
FICTION
Stellaluna has been a favorite book with all three of my children since they were little, so I include it here even though it's about a Fruit Bat (and they don't generally have echolocation or live in caves). But, if you are expanding this to learn about bats in general it would be nice to include. It has a charming story about a bat who is adopted by birds, and beautiful illustrations. The dialog is so fun to read...the birds talk in short chirpy phrases while the bats take on smoother tones. It's fanciful, but also has real details about bat life, and a little non-fiction section about Fruit Bats in the back. It's recommended for ages 4-7 (but I think you could go a little older or younger, depending on your children). It's available at all Waco Libraries and Hewitt Library. You can also see a
video of it being read here, and there is a teacher guide with questions and activities you can do (some of which are similar to the activities above).
Bat Loves the Night
This book tells a story, but includes lots of facts about bats along the way. The illustrations are beautiful and realistic. The story is simple and has a poem-like feel. There are sidebars with more info, which I suggest going back to read after reading the story straight through (because they can interrupt the rhythm of the story and make it clunky if you read them while reading the main story). This book is recommended for children age 4-8, though some readers suggest it for older children (my child was 7 when we read this). It's available at Hewitt Library and Waco Waco Central Library.
Bats Book Series by Brian Lies
These books are so fun. They follow fictional bats as they explore different places, and have fun doing things real bats never do (but with some real bat flair). They are recommeded for kids age 4-7 years old, my my 9 year old read one recently and loved it, so that's flexible. Various ones of these are available at the Hewitt and Waco Libraries.
My New Friend Is So Fun!
Elephant and Piggie books are great "read-on-your-own" books for new readers, with wonderful messages about friendship. They are also great "read-with-a-friend" books. My kiddo largely learned to read through these books--with me reading Piggie's part, and him reading Elephant's (these were the first books he ASKED to read, vs being forced to read). While this doesn't really have anything related to real bats, its a great little story about new friends and old. It is available at Hewitt and Central and various Waco Libraries. It's recommended for ages 4-8 years old, but honestly, my kiddo still loves these at 10....cause funny doesn't grow old.
Shadows of Night
