Children's Literature for Music Ed: "Five Little Bats Flying in the Night"

Here is another re-write of "Six Little Ducks" just in time for Halloween! Steve Metzger is the author and Laura Bryant is the illustrator of "Five Little Bats Flying in the Night", a cute book to sing with your early childhood students. In the story,  "rambunctious bats get into all sorts of trouble as their mother tries to protect them from one mishap after another. An inventive approach to counting and rhymes, Metzger and Bryant show that, despite life's risks, mother has to "let those little bats fly, fly, fly!"

Here are my ideas for use in music class:

• Find a good image of a bat and make five copies. I attach yarn to each bat picture and five students wear the bats with yarn aroung their necks.

• Echo sing the song with the children until they are secure with the melody.

• As you sing each verse, be sure to have the children "fly away" one by one. Be sure to demonstrate the subtraction that is taking place, such as 5-1=4, 4-1=3, etc.

• Two more students can play the part of the mother bat and the doctor. Give the "mother" a phone and make sure that the doctor is ready to give the directions!

• Some good examples of bat images:
  
  


• If you have a particularly large class, and feel that singling out just seven students to be the bats isn't going to suit their needs, you could place the five bat images on the board with magnets, and have students take them away as you sing about them.