This week was “bat week” in T’s Kindergarten class. My guess is that a lot of Kindergarteners district-wide were studying bats this week also. But we didn’t leave the bats behind at school… we tracked some down right here in Long Beach!

Just one of several take-home “bat”-themed lessons from bat week at school.

C played golf Tuesday and came home to tell T and I that he saw bats flying around at dusk. Well, how timely is that? And if there’s any better way to learn about something than reading about it in a book or doing a craft about it then it’s actually going and seeing it live and in person, observing it, and then having a discussion about it afterward. This is why we go to so many museums, travel so often, and in general just go out and do things together as a family. Thank god we all actually like one another (right?!).

Anyway, back to the bats. The bat excursion at first wasn’t living up to expectations. I mean C REALLY talked up these bats to the point where T told his teacher and classmates about his dad seeing them and that we were going out to see them, too. His teacher even asked us to get some photos, to which I was pretty non-committal since I had no idea what exactly we were going to see, but of course I told her that we’d do our best.

And out come… the bats!

So we looked and looked and just were not seeing the bats that C had come home so excited about seeing the very night before. T even got a bit distracted for the first 20 minutes of our outing and resorted to a pine cone hunt in the nearby park. But once the sun went down just a wee bit more on the horizon… out came the bats! First we just one or two for several minutes but our sightings quickly increased to at least one or two every 30 seconds right overhead. It was pretty cool, so much so that T quickly gave up the pine cone hunt.

I realize these photos are not pro level by any means, but it’s amazing C got any snapshot at all that included a bat in flight, let alone a few. From where we were standing the bats were zig-zagging even more than they normally might in their regular flight patterns because of the street signs, passing cars, and other city-type objects that they appeared to be picking up on their sonar.

If you are a Long Beach local and interested in going to see the bats, the ones we saw are in and among the trees at “Little Rec” Golf Course along 6th St. and about 200 yards east of Park Ave. They came out at dusk (about 6:30 p.m. this week) and likely remain active into the evening hours. Please use common sense and do not approach live, injured, or deceased bats due to rabies risks.

RMT’ers, how have you extended your child’s classroom curriculum into a home learning lesson? Please share your ideas and experiences!