We found a wealth of information, and bat themed activities in The K-8 Aeronautics Internet Textbook, including this Marco Polo style, bat echolocation game.One child, playing the bat, is blindfolded. While the rest, playing the insects, are not.
The bat calls out - "Insects?"
The insects answer - "Here!"
The Aeronautics site suggested calling out "beep, beep", and answering with "buzz, buzz", but the kids thought that sounded silly.
Staying within a boundary area, the bat tries to find, and tag the insects.
When insects are tagged, they must wait out the rest of the round in the bat cave. We designated the swing set as the bat cave.
The last insect to be tagged, becomes the bat in the next round.
The kids enjoyed the game, a lot more than I thought they would, especially once the Man of the House, and I joined in as insects. And, although it might not be the most scientific way to learn about echolocation, it did teach us a lot about the techniques bugs use to avoid bats.The children naturally started exhibiting behaviours I had read about moths using, such as dropping to the ground, changing direction, and trying to send back false echoes (mainly trying to sound like they were coming from somewhere else).
For more fun with science, be sure to check out this week's Science Sunday link-up, at Adventures in Mommydom.
It's great to be a homeschooler.
That sounds like a lot of fun; it's Marco Polo - I haven't played that since I was a kid. It must be fun to play games like this with six kids in your family!!!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing as Christy, you already have enough people to play a game like this. I could see just Selena and I trying something like this. The kids look like they are having a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteYou are so fortunate to have the entire family be able to play games like this! I need to round up some neigborhood children if we want to play games. I'm still waiting to get a large enough group to play Hug a Bear. The echolocation game sounds like a lot of fun and how cool that the children behaved in ways that the insects would have!
ReplyDeleteBlind-folded games are a lot of fun and always make kids laugh. Did any of the bats fly into the wall accidently?
ReplyDeleteWhat fun! I am going to bookmark this to do when we study bats.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you didn't get any fish out of water, so that's good.
ReplyDeleteHow fun! I bet they'll never forget how bats communicate =)
ReplyDeleteyou always have awesome games and activities to go with your learning. O am terrible at that.
ReplyDeleteWe called this game "Blind Cat" when I was growing up. I was also thinking how neat it is that you have enough kids to play group games.
ReplyDeleteHere's a fun variation of this game. Have everyone make a circle and have one person come in the circle. Don't let the bat know who this is. The bat has to find their prey by calling out echo and the prey answers prey and everyone else says tree. When the prey is tagged,they are now the bat and a new moth is picked.
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