Bat Cereal Boxes

Oh.. Halloween. Is it too early to start thinking about Halloween? Halloween decorations are out in the grocery stores so you know it's on the kiddos minds. I still think it's a little ways away, but the closer we get to this holiday.. the more difficult the kiddos act in class. I mean.. I know they smell the sugar that they'll be eating way too much of and they're excited but.. Oh. My. Goodness.  They can be difficult to teach at this time! A few years ago I was left wondering.. What can I do to keep them engaged in learning when their minds are on costumes, candy, on anything except what they're supposed to be thinking about and haunted houses? Then I found the answer... A Bat Cereal Box project!

Something about putting a report on a cereal box just keeps them interested in learning, even on Halloween! My first year doing this project, I looked around on Halloween and saw that all of my students were engaged in their learning and working to the best of their abilities to put the cereal box together. Score!

This is something I usually begin prior to Halloween because it takes a lot of research and there just isn't enough time to complete it in one day. We have a story that is about a bat in our basal reader and we usually start the story the first week in October, and once we begin reading that I introduce the project. At my school we have a subscription to Reading A-Z, so we read a few books about bats from that site to help us research. And of course, you have to include Stellaluna with this project, too!

We begin our unit on bats with our Bat Scientist Research Journal. I really emphasize that real scientists use journals to record the things they learn, and I try to remember to call them bat scientists to keep them engaged in the note taking aspect of the unit.

The students learn a lot of vocabulary, and use a lot of graphic organizers to show what they've learned in this unit. Here's a sneak peek at some things you'll find in the unit:

Last year, I had my students complete two parts (the cover and the game) of this project at home, and it was a huge success. I sent home a parent letter with some game templates so the student can choose whichever game they want to do. (And, if they mess up then they have another game template that they can use!) On the front of the cereal box the students think of a creative name to "sell" their cereal. It needs to be about Bats, of course, but I let them know that they can choose whatever name they want.

Here are some of my favorite covers from this project:

Other names I've seen in the past are Battios or Bat Loops. I love the creative names they come up with!

Here is my favorite example of the games they have created. Another option for the word bank would be to use a clue bank and have them write clues for the given words. You could do this by the number, or leave the numbers off.

Unscramble A Word using bat vocabulary. 

The other sides consist of different writing prompts, which we do in class. On Side 1 the students take on the role of a Zookeeper that takes care of bats, and write an informative paragraph about what they would say if they were giving a presentation about bats. On Side 2, the students write fun facts that we learn about bats. Differentiated pages are included so you can choose how many facts one student should write about things they learned. The minimum is three, but there is a template for 5 facts for your more motivated writers.  On the bottom the students write facts and opinions about bats. There are several templates available so you can choose how many facts and/or opinions you want your students to write about bats.

This project has been one of their favorite activities from the entire year ever since I began this unit. It is on sale in my TpT store for 15% off from now until October 1st, so click the image below to grab it on sale!