It is fun to learn about nocturnal animals. We make a bat craft or owl mask, dissect owl pellets, search for bugs in the sensory bin, make a bat cave, play an echolocation game, and read books about bats.

Bat Craft

We make these cute bat crafts that can hang upside down. (Full tutorial.)

Craft: Owl Masks

Materials: Prep paper plate cut-outs of barn owls and great horned owls
Natural colored feathers (black, brown, and etc.), glue mixed with brown liquid color/tempera paint, paint brushes, marker for writing names. Pictures of barn owls and great horned owls. Optional: craft sticks and tape to make handles with.

They paint on the paint/glue mixture. Add feathers to decorate it.

Science Experiment – Owl Pellets

Owls can not digest the fur, feathers, teeth and bones/skulls of the animals they eat. Several hours after they are finished eating, the owls cough up a pellet of the leftover bones, fur or feathers of their prey (from the proventriculus inside their body). You can buy owl pellets to dissect. We put them out on trays with tweezers and toothpicks, magnifying glasses and the bone matching chart. (FYI: pellets have been sterilized, and there isn’t a bad smell or anything.)

Kids take apart the owl pellet looking for the bones and teeth of small rodents or the feathers of smaller birds. They compare the teeth and bones they discovered to the animal bone charts.

More Science Learning

What Big Ears You Have

Materials: Roll two cones out of paper. Clip off the point to make a SMALL opening. Take 2 plastic (or paper) cups. Trim the bottom of both. Trim a small segment out of one.

Add a card like this:

Venn Diagram

Print this, then cut apart the labels at the bottom. Kids sort out what qualities bats have versus owls, and what they have in common.

Compare Humans to Bats / Owls

This worksheet helps them learn about the similarities and differences. You may also like the “How Do I Compare to a Bat” worksheet, for second grade and up.

Sensory Bin

Fill the bin with something like dry leaves, or soil, or bark. Add a few rocks or big pieces of wood to turn over. Add plastic spiders and insects, tweezers, and a few containers. Add a sign saying: “Bug Hunt! Lots of insects are active at night time, and during the daytime will hide away unless you dig them up or turn over rocks to find them. Can you find the bugs in this bin? Then can you help the bugs hide again under the rocks?”

Pretend Play – Bat Cave

Set up a blanket fort, or tunnel, or large cardboard box for them to hide in. Add flashlights and stuffed animals or puppets or felt board of nocturnal animal like bat, owl, mice, bear, raccoon, porcupine, etc.

Echolocation Game

Children form a circle of “trees”. One child is blindfolded – they’re the bat. One or two kids are “moths” the bat is trying to catch. When bat says “bat”, moths have to say “moth”. (Or bat claps once, moths clap twice.) If bat is about to run into a tree, tree can say “tree”.  Indoors do on hands and knees. Outdoors can do standing. More details on game are here: https://gen.uga.edu/documents/pest/Bat%20and%20Moth.pdf

Group Time

We covered this the week after we talked about habitats. So, I start by saying: “We learned a rhyme to help us remember the things that an animal needs in its habitat. Do you remember the rhyme?” [Food, Water, Shelter, Space, a habitat is a wonderful place.] Then here are some ideas I cover:

“In every habitat, there are changes between night and day. What is different at night from in the daytime? [Darker, colder, harder to see.] Some animals are most active in the daytime – we call those diurnal, and some animals are most active at night-time – what do we call those? [nocturnal] Can you think of some examples of nocturnal animals? [brainstorm – mention that there’s a sorting activity where they can sort them]”

“Can you name a few things that fly around at night?” [they brainstorm, then I show samples of bat and owl crafts, and owl masks, talk about option of playing in the bat cave]

“How do nocturnal animals find food?” [reference the echolocation activity we did outside, and talk about the eyes and ears activity]

“What do bats eat?” [show cards about how they’ve evolved, based on what food is available in habitat] “What do owls eat?” [Explain Owl Pellets]

Books

For a “book you can sing” try: I know an old lady who swallowed a bat. (affiliate link). Video preview.

Little Owl’s Night is sweet vignettes about what animals do at night. Video. Fiona the Fruit Bat focuses on echolocation. Video.

For basic non-fiction, try Night Creatures by Jeunesse. Or Night Animals by Marina is a silly option. Video preview.

More book ideas:

Songs

I have two bat songs in my bat craft post.

Resources: Find more bat-themed lesson plans here.