Pine Cone Bats

I know that pine cone owls are more traditional at this time of year, but after collecting the pine cones, it turned out the children had their hearts set on painting them like they did for last year's Thanksgiving place card holders.


I'm planning something different for Thanksgiving this year, so I compromised with the children, and let them paint their pine cones with black tempera paint, for bats, instead.

It's about time to watch The Magic School Bus Goes Batty, to counteract the effects of all the creepy Halloween decorations going up around town, anyway. The Magic School Bus goes perfectly with this activity, because it takes about as long to cover a pine cone in a good coating of paint, as it does to watch the bat themed episode.

Unfortunately, the episode has disappeared from the Internet. You can't even pay to download it from anywhere I could find. So, hopefully you can find the The Magic School Bus Creepy Crawly Fun, which contains the Goes Batty episode, like we did, at our local library.

As to the craft, once they'd painted their pine cones, and left them overnight to dry, I added cut out construction paper circles, and wings...


...for the children to glue together...


...and to their pine cones.




Then, I tied strings around the pine cones...


...and the other ends to the light fixture over our table, to let the bats take flight.



It's great to be a homeschooler.