Go Batty for Reading with These October CVC Activities
October, the month of Halloween, is such a fun time for thematic teaching! Here are some engaging CVC activities that will allow you to incorporate phonics into your bat theme.
A bat theme is great for October. It gives a nod to Halloween, harnessing all the excitement that the holiday brings, but also packs in a lot of rich content knowledge. You can find a lot of tips and resources for your bat unit in this “Keeping Them Curious” post.
CVC Activities for Your Bat Theme
The CVC activities in this article focus on words with the medial short “a” sound, as in bat. You can adapt these activities to fit within the scope and sequence of your literacy program. These flexible idea will get your wheels turning on how to integrate reading skills practice into your bat theme.
Start with a Song
Vowel Bat is a catchy song that children can learn quickly. This is a fun warm-up activity that refreshes students’ memories on the short vowel sounds.
After practicing the short vowel sounds, review any lessons that you’ve taught about CVC words and/or closed syllables. Remind students that the words you’ll be practicing begin and end with consonants but have a vowel in the middle.
Listen for Phonemes
This is a great time to launch into a quick phonemic awareness activity by practicing oral blending and segmenting of sounds to make (and break apart) CVC words with the medial short “a” sound. Here’s an example of how this might sound:
Teacher: Let’s practice tapping and blending some CVC words! Everyone, hold one arm out in front of you and get ready to tap the word BAT.
Children and teacher hold one arm out in front and use the other hand to tap the shoulder, elbow, and wrist while saying the three sounds of the word. Then they bring their hand back up to the shoulder and slide it down to the hand while blending the sounds together to say the whole word.
Students: /b/-/a/-/t/, bat!
Teacher: Let’s change the beginning sound to make the word cat.
Students: /c/-/a/-/t/, cat!
Continue practicing, first with -at family words and then moving to other medial “a” CVC words such as man, tap, bag, and ham.
Put It in Writing with an Anchor Chart
Help students develop their phoneme-grapheme understanding by creating a shared anchor chart with the words you have practiced. (You can premake the bat illustration and the word boxes to keep things moving along during your lesson. I’ve included a bat illustration in the free printable to make this even easier!) For each word, have the whole group tap the sounds of a word while one student comes up to write the corresponding letters. (Have some cover-up tape on hand so mistakes will be no big deal!)
Make Time for Independent Practice
After working together to make an anchor chart, give your students a chance to show what they know by writing a few dictated CVC words on their own paper. You can find a printable template in the free resource library. For each word you dictate, have students tap and blend orally before writing the graphemes in the boxes.
Add a Little Art
If time permits, have the students use the back of their paper to write and illustrate a bat. You can display a photograph of a bat to give them practice at observational drawing, have them simply use their imaginations, or play a directed drawing video for them.
Here’s a cute how-to video from Art for Kids Hub on YouTube:
Extend Learning with a Decodable Bat Book
I’ve tried my hand at making a decodable reader to go along with this lesson. Dan the Sad Bat uses several CVC words with the short “a” sound in the middle (and just a few other common words). I’ve placed it in the free resource library and would love your feedback on it if you decide to use it with your students!
I hope these CVC activities help you integrate reading into your bat theme. Scroll on to find more bat resources.
More Bat Resources
Bats and Owls Unit with PowerPoint
This “All About Bats and Owls” thematic unit includes an informational PowerPoint slideshow and printable materials to help you integrate learning about owls and bats into science, literacy, and math in your primary classroom. You will download a zipped folder containing a PowerPoint File and a PDF.
Bat Math Puzzles Center
Bring your bat theme into your math instruction with this set of easy-prep math puzzles! Perfect as an independent practice math center, these fun bat math puzzles include four skills: shape matching (2D & 3D), numbers 1-10, teen numbers, and beginning addition (sums through 5).
