How to Make a Bat Craft with Preschoolers

Inside: This preschool bat craft is not only fun to make, but also looks great hanging in the window. A fun addition to your fall theme!

Do you hang your preschoolers’ artwork in the window?

This bat craft is made with the window in mind, as it’s made with clear plastic plates and is a fun fall decoration.

It’s also a great way to strengthen fine motor skills, as there’s lots of pressing materials into glue!

Why buy decorations when they can be made?

How to Make a Bat Craft with Preschoolers

The idea to make hanging bats came to me while I was adding sponge bats to one of our classroom windows.

I’ve always preferred decorating our classroom with the children’s work.

So why hang store-bought sponge bats when we could make our own?

What we used for our bat craft:

Clear plastic plates (I found some thin ones at the Dollar Tree)
Black construction paper
Black tissue paper
Wiggly eyes
White school glue
Craft glue

Prepping this craft:

Remove the rim from the plate so that it’s a flat circle.

Using the black construction paper, cut small triangles for the ears and bat wings. They don’t need to be fancy!

Cut small squares from the black tissue paper.

Putting together this bat craft:

Explain to your preschoolers that they will be squeezing some glue onto the plate and then using a brush to move it around.

You could also pour some glue into a small dish and let the children brush it on the plate, rather than handing them a bottle of glue. (Squeezing is a great way to build the muscles in the hands and fingers, so that’s why I chose to let ours squeeze their glue. However, I was close by to make sure not too much was removed from the bottle.)

Once the glue is brushed around the plate, show them how to press the tissue paper squares on top of it.

Some preschoolers will want to cover all of the surface, others not so much. I don’t make a big deal out of it. It’s their craft, after all.

Once they are finished pressing the black tissue paper squares to the glue, they can add the eyes. Rather than use the school glue to attach the eyes, I strongly suggest using craft glue. In my experience, the eyes have popped off when using school glue. I simply squeezed some of the craft glue on the backs of the eyes right before the children were ready to apply them.

By the way, I bought these huge wiggly eyes on accident a couple of years ago, but ended up loving them! They seem to add even more personality to the craft!