Stellaluna Activities

Bats cut from construction paper with sight words written in chalk. Text reads "stellaluna activities"

Today we have several Stellaluna activities that we created many years ago. This Halloween fine motor task doubles down on the skill-building. With one bat craft based on the children’s book, Stellaluna, we’re covering skills like handwriting, scissor skills, math, reading, bilateral coordination, visual scanning, and much more!

As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Stellaluna activities

Stellaluna Activities

If you haven’t read the children’s book, Stellaluna, then you are in for a treat. The Stellaluna activity and bat games we have to share today are fun ways to read the book and play with a bat theme, and the bat activities would work for a Halloween party with kids, too!

Scroll on for Stellaluna games that teach and are fun!

Stellaluna by Janell Cannon is a sweet story of a bat who is adopted by a bird family after he is knocked from his mother’s grasp during a flight.  We see how different and same the bat and the birds are and also notice the differences.  We were able to talk about how we as family members are all the same, yet different, and how other people we meet or know might be different and do things differently, but inside we are all the same.

Going on the theme of differences and similarities among the bat and his new bird family, we decided to examine sight words, Upper case letters, and numbers with bats! For more fun, make a bat craft to go along with your Stellaluna game, too!

While this is a great preschool book extension activity, the best thing about our Stellaluna game is that we modified it to fit the needs of my three older kids.  

We practiced upper case letter identification with the 3 year old preschooler, sight word identification with the Kindergartner, and math facts with the Second grader. The 16 month old toddler just liked grabbing the bats from the wall.  

Very fun and age appropriate, but we’ll share more about what the older kids did today 😉

Stellaluna Bat Activity

This post contains affiliate links.
If you haven’t read the book Stellaluna (affiliate link), grab it up at your library!  This was a new book to us, and one that I’m so glad we read. 

For this Stellaluna craft, you’ll need just a few materials:

  • Black construction paper
  • Bat template
  • White crayon

Then, if you want to work on visual processing skills needed for reading and writing such as the skills:

  1. visual scanning– Needed to scan on the page or overhead on the board to copy words and sentences. When the eyes shift back to the page and then back to the copying source, sometimes the eyes shift and get lost. This is how we have omissions in handwriting tasks.
  2. visual tracking– This visual skill is essential for following along a line of words in a reading task.
  3. visual attention– When the eyes shift on the pages without sustained attention, we see missing words or lines of text.
  4. visual memory– This skill is difficult for many children, and it’s how we recall what we’ve seen to work on memorizing, reading, and writing skills.

then you’ll also need:

  • Flashlight(s)
  • Tape
  • A yardstick or ruler (for visual tracking skills)
Bat template for a Stellaluna activity

Let’s start with using the bat template to make the bat craft.

  1. First, print off this free printable bat stencil.  Cut out the bat and trace it onto black cardstock (affiliate link) paper.  
  2. We cut out about 15 bats, but you can cut out as many bats as you need.  If you’ll be practicing letters, you may want one for each letter of the alphabet.
  3. Write on the bats with a white crayon.  We practiced sight words first and wrote out the words my Kindergartener has been working on. 
  4. Tape the bats to the wall and get ready to play!  
Stellaluna book bat games including sight word games, math facts game, letter identification game.  This is a fun twist on learning facts and words for preschoolers, kindergarten, and second grade, with a bat theme!  I love the flashlight game!

StellaLuna Activity for Sight Words

First, we played a flashlight sight word activity as a warm-up.  I read through a few pages of the book and when we got to a sight word, my son used the flashlight to find the matching sight word on the wall.  He really got into this activity.  

Note that this activity was done many years ago (2015) and we were focusing a lot on sight words in reading.

Now, this might not be the optimal way to target reading skills. Using vocabulary words from Stellaluna may be more ideal for working on reading skills. Feel free to use this activity with the reading curriculum or standards that work for your classroom or school.

Stellaluna Game

Next, to make this Stellaluna activity into more of a game, we created a flashlight race using the same bat cut outs.

We pulled out a second flashlight and when we reached a sight word in the book, the two older kids raced to flash their light on the sight word.  

The first to light it up was the winner.  

Using the flashlights in a dark-ish room reminded us of Stellaluna (affiliate link) flying at night and how the birds would need a flashlight to see.

Again, feel free to use the words from the book on the bats. Just turn down the lights in the classroom and pull the shades to darken the room. Then, use the flashlights to “race” to find the word that you call out.

StellaLuna Math Activity

We also used these same bat cut outs to work on math skills.

  1. To play the math facts game with my second grader, I wrote out numbers 10-20 on the bats.  (Just flip the bats over and use the other side if you are playing more than one game!  No need to cut out more bats, unless you need them.)  

2. Tape the numbered bats to the wall in a random arrangement.  This game was fun for her to practice her math facts up to 20.  

3. I called out a number and then had her roll a die.  

4. She then had to add the number to the number that I called out and run over to the wall and hit the right number.  

We also did a round of subtraction.  You can make this more of a game by adding a second player. Then, extend the math activity by using a couple of flashlights to make this a fun racing game in a dark room.

Here are more Halloween math activities that you can also try.

Bat Letter Identification Activity

Finally, we used the same bat shapes to work on letter identification skills.

For my preschooler, we wrote upper case letters on the bats and taped them to the wall.  

She played a version of the flashlight game as we scanned through the book.  I pointed to a lower case letter and named it and she had to flash the light on the letter on the wall.  

We also practiced letter sounds by saying the sound the letter makes and she had to find the letter on the wall.

Scanning for the correct bat on the wall was a great way to incorporate visual scanning and visual perceptual skills into this learning game activity.  

 
Stellaluna book bat games including sight word games, math facts game, letter identification game.  This is a fun twist on learning facts and words for preschoolers, kindergarten, and second grade, with a bat theme!  I love the flashlight game!
 

 

 

Stellaluna book bat games including sight word games, math facts game, letter identification game.  This is a fun twist on learning facts and words for preschoolers, kindergarten, and second grade, with a bat theme!  I love the flashlight game!
 

More Stellaluna Activities

Looking for more Stellaluna (affiliate link) activities?  Here are some fun bat activities that pair well with the book:
 
 
  
 
 
 

Free Stellaluna Bat Template

Print off the template and trace it onto construction paper. Enter your email address into the form below to access this resource. You’ll also find this item inside our Membership club, along with many other bat themed activities and resources.

Free Bat Stencil

    Are you interested in resources on (check all that apply):
    We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at anytime.

    Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

    Self Regulation Group Activities

    teacher leading group of children in a reaching exercise. Text reads "self regulation group activities"

    Today we are covering fun ways to use self-regulation group activities to support regulation, social emotional skills, and coping strategies in a group setting. While the concept of self regulation is an individualized concept, there are many ways that a group activity like the ones described below can support individual needs. Let’s explain…

    self regulation group activities

    Self regulation group activities are appropriate for all ages, from preschool groups to small groups of middle school or high school students.

    Self Regulation Group Activities

    The term “self” and “group” in the title are oxymorons. Self regulation refers to “the ability to understand and manage your behavior, and your reactions to feelings and things happening around you

    This being said, there are many times that sensory strategies can not be done in isolation. A classroom is a good example.

    Many schools have a sensory room. This is a great location for group self regulation activities. Read about various ways to meet coping needs in our blog post on how to create a sensory room on a budget.

    In this post we will review Self Regulation Group Activities, talk about the benefits, and discuss drawbacks to working on self regulation in a group.

    self regulation in a Group

    Before getting into Self Regulation Group Activities, we should take a minute to review.

    Self regulation is used to:

    • regulate reactions to strong emotions like frustration, excitement, anger and embarrassment
    • calm down after something exciting or upsetting
    • focus on a task
    • refocus attention on a new task
    • impulse control
    • behave in ways that help you get along with other people.

    As your child grows, self-regulation helps them:

    • learn at school – because self-regulation gives your student the ability to sit and listen in the classroom
    • behave in socially acceptable ways and control their impulses
    • make friends – self-regulation gives your child the ability to take turns in games and conversation, share toys, and express emotions in appropriate ways
    • become more independent – self-regulation gives your child the ability to make appropriate decisions about behavior and learn how to behave in new situations with less guidance from adults

    All of these concepts can be covered and developed in a small group setting.

    benefits to working on self regulation group activities

    While there are certainly challenges to working on self regulation in a group setting such as a classroom, there are also benefits:

    • Efficiency – working with 25 children all together is much more efficient than working individually with those same students.
    • Peer learning – self regulation group activities foster peer learning and interaction. Students learn positive and negative interactions from those around them.
    • Improves group attention – learning to work in a group while also working on oneself takes more attention than individual lessons because students need to filter out group noise and movement.
    • Empathy development– discussing social emotional concepts in a group fosters empathy.
    • Great for data collection – while students are working in a group, adults can watch for trends, negative/positive responses, and pick out difficulties among a crowd. When comparing children together in a group it is much easier to see who is struggling than when seeing them all individually.
    • Group work is one of the key elements of school dynamics – self regulation group activities are often fun and rewarding. Practicing group work in this manner helps build a foundation of working together.
    • Executive function – a set of mental skills that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control.

    drawbacks to working on self regulation group activities

    Just the term “self” indicates it is preferable to work one on one rather than in a group. There are definitely some challenges to working on this complex and individual task within a large group:

    It may be difficult to meet the needs of all students when discussing self-regulation strategies in a large group you may have different levels of learners, and more importantly different arousal levels and needs. Child A might need a “pick me up”, while Child B could benefit from a calming activity. The answer is to pick activities that foster general improved self regulation and arousal level.

    The group setting may not be the best place for supporting a disorganized student. If your student is already overwhelmed or dysregulated, and in a high state of arousal, adding 24 other children is likely to set them over the top. This is the challenge in a classroom.

    Difficulty with data collection – if 12/24 students are struggling in your self regulation group activities, it will be hard to gather data about each of their skill levels, behavior, and deficits.

    Group work may make using the individualized self regulation strategies more difficult, unless the whole group is practicing one specific tool, all at the same time. If the purpose of self regulation is to: calm down after something exciting or upsetting, focus on a task, refocus attention on a new task, and control impulses, it is going to be tough for your students to do this while in a group.

    ideas for self regulation group activities

    While balancing the benefits and drawbacks to self regulation in a group, there are some great activities out there. Some of these ideas incorporate proprioceptive input for body awareness and others incorporate talking and learning about self regulation concepts.

    1. Brain gym – the is a popular program that incorporates 26 activities to work on learning through movement

    2. Yoga for kids – yoga is an activity that can increase and decrease arousal level. It is a type of proprioceptive and vestibular activity that is grounding. These partner yoga poses can be a great activity for self regulation in a small group. Other ideas include:

    3. Obstacle courses turn your gym or classroom space into an obstacle course. Students work on their own self regulation while working in a group. They can crawl under desks, step over and around chairs, hop across tiles, do wall push ups, and more. This will help improve arousal level while working on key components of turn taking, social function, impulse control, and behavior.

    4. Sensory play – sensory play can be an individual activity done in a group. Each student can work on their own project while the rest of the class is doing the same. This can include art, play dough, sand, building activities, or noise making

    5. Sensory stations – similar to an obstacle course, sensory stations are a path that is followed with different experiences at every stop. This might include hopping, jumping, crawling, push ups, deep breathing, clapping and more. These are great in hallways and classrooms.

    6. Centers – center time allows for a large group to be divided into smaller groups that rotate through different activities. You can hand pick which center a group of student needs most. Maybe these five need the quiet reading nook, while another five need playdough at the table.

    7. Gross motor coordination activities – while an organized structured activity is preferable for working on focus and regaining self control, there are times when free play gross motor fun is great. Send the group out to play on the playground. Set out riding toys for all of the students. Throw a basket of balls around the gym. While this may be disorganizing for some students, it might be just the fast paced input several students need

    8. Sensory eating – oral sensory input is a large part of sensory integration. Put on an audio book while giving your students some great sensory snacks. These might be popcorn, sour candy, twizzlers, crunchy veggies, flaming hot Cheetos, etc. While I am not a huge fan of giving kids junk food, it is rare that students will snack on carrot sticks and celery.

    9. Group chores – why not enlist your group in a clean up session. Everyone can crawl around on the floor picking up paper shreds. Students can stack chairs or wipe off tables. We used to have to clack the erasers together, but smart boards did away with that fun task.

    10. Emotional Regulation games– Pull out one of these games for teaching self regulation skills.

    11. Talk about feeling words, and emotional responses to situations. Playing “what would you do” in a small group facilitates learning because students can hear the options and ideas that other group participants offer. This is a way for the students to build their emotional vocabulary.

    reflection on self regulation group activities

    Group activities have a benefit, as well as posing challenges. As the proverb says, “necessity is the mother of all invention”. Sometimes there are no alternatives to working in groups, or the benefits of group interaction outweighs the struggles.

    The best compromise is self regulation group activities in which the student is more or less working individually while in a group setting. This takes strategic planning, but can be done successfully. Imagine a karate class where everyone is working side by side in a group, but focusing on their own balance, breathing, and coordination.

    Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.