Welcome to the The Ball House Report. You can expect the Report twice monthly on Fridays. It will update you as to the goings on in our classroom, and give you full picture of our Brown Room community!

And now, for this week’s Report:

If You Build It, They Will Come

Recently, Woolly (our ‘new’ classmate, a fruit bat) came to the Ball House with a problem.

“When you guys go home at night, I feel sad because I just sit on a shelf alone.”

The Ball House quickly came up with an idea- We could build Woolly a home! We had been talking about building houses, as well as reading many books on the subject, so the kids were percolating ideas. However, there was another problem, the Ball House only knew about human homes! We needed to learn more about bats so we could build Woolly a house that was perfect for him.

So, we began to do some research. We first read some books about fictional bats, like ‘Stellaluna’ by Janell Cannon and ‘I Am Bat’ by Morag Hood. Next, we made a ‘KWL’ chart (That’s teacher speak for ‘Know, Want to Know, Learned’).

Here is what we knew:

They fly

They eat fruit

They sleep upside down

They use their wings as a blanket

Here’s what we wanted to know:

Where do fruit bats live?

Do fruit bats have a family?

Do bats die?

We then took an ‘Imagination Adventure’ to the Rainforest and a Bat Sanctuary via videos to become bat scientists. We took field notes, and the kids presented their findings during an informal discussion.

Finally, we read the book ‘Bats’ by Gail Gibbons. In this book, we learned that bat houses are actually called ‘Roosts,’ as well as learning that many bat species are endangered! We finished out our KWL with notes from our findings. Here’s the finished product:

Through our research cycle, we have been working on some important skills. As the kids have observed bats, they’ve learned critical thinking and problem solving skills (For example…Just how are we going to get Woolly to sleep upside down!) They’ve learned note taking, how to take in information from multiple sources, share learned information, and parse through it to find succinct answers to questions. Most importantly, they’ve practiced empathy and care as they think about Woolly, and how we can be responsive to his needs, which are very different from their own!

We’re currently in the process of finishing our build, and can’t wait to show you the finished product!

Questions You Can Ask Your Ball House Student:

1. How old are bats when they become grown ups?

2. What can we do to help bats? (This has something that’s been top of mind for the kids! We don’t have answers for this one, and are interested in hearing some of their ideas! )

3. What did you do in Nutcracker Ballet class?