Bat Letter Sounds Activity

Inside: Help preschool and kindergarten students practice letter recognition and beginning sounds with a fun bat letter sounds activity perfect for October and Halloween.

There’s just something about bats that captures kids’ curiosity. Whether you’re reading bat stories like Stellaluna, making bat crafts, or exploring nocturnal animals, they always seem to draw children in. Plus, I love that with a bat theme, you can include all children, regardless of whether or not they celebrate Halloween.

Bat Letter Sounds Activity

I know that sometimes bats can seem scary. However, this cute hands-on activity adds some seasonal, early literacy fun without being spooky at all!

Skills Covered

The activity helps little learners work on several important skills:

• Matching letters with initial sounds
• Matching uppercase and lowercase letters
• Handwriting
• Fine motor skills

What’s Included in the Free Printable

• Stick & Write “Batty for Letter Sounds” sheet (1 page)
• Letter and Letter Sound pieces (3 pages)
• Batty Word List (3 pages)

See the end of this post to learn how to download your own copy.

Materials Needed

• Dry-erase pocket (or you can just laminate the Stick & Write sheet, but I think a pocket erases better.)
• Dry-erase marker
• Sticky tack (or a bit of playdough)

Preparation

1. Print the activity and cut out the pieces. You may want to print multiple copies of the bat page.
2. Cut out the letter and letter-sound pieces and laminate if desired.
3. Slide the bat page into a dry-erase pocket, or laminate it.

How to Play

1. Invite children to choose a letter and then search for its matching sound picture and corresponding upper- or lower-case letter.
2. Next comes the sticky tack fun! Students should use a small piece of sticky tack to attach their letter sound picture to the bat’s belly and the letters to the wings.
3. After matching, children should use a dry-erase marker to write the letter on the handwriting line below the bat. Then they can erase, remove the pieces, and repeat with another letter.

How to Differentiate

You can differentiate this bat activity to meet the needs of all learners:

• Beginning learners:
  • Offer just a few letters at a time, focusing on familiar ones like the first letters in their names.
  • You could even print out another copy of the letter pieces pages and cut out each letter group as a card. Students can refer to it when placing their pieces on the bat.

• More advanced learners:
  • Provide a larger pool of letters and pictures to search among.
  • Have students copy their entire words from the “batty word list” pages, rather than just practicing the first letter.
  • Challenge kids to name additional words that start with the same initial sound.

Download the Free Printable Bat Letter Sounds Activity

Ready to try this printable activity with your students?

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Happy Teaching!