Simple Bat Craft for Kids

Using coffee filter art in a simple bat craft for the kiddos

Recently, my preschool students had fun with Housing a Forest’s Monster Marker Prints. We had an awesome substitute teacher in the room that day (hi, you know who you are)! She wondered if there was a way to use coffee filter art to create bats, which led me to this simple bat craft for the kiddos!

Materials
Large coffee filters
Markers in Halloween colors
Spray bottle with water
Black pipe cleaners
Glue
Googly eyes
Black construction paper

To make the bat wings, the kiddos colored in a large coffee filter using black, yellow, purple, and orange markers. Some children used all of the colors, while others stuck with just one or two.

Once colored to their satisfactions, the students sprayed water all over their coffee filters. The colors bled into each other, creating some beautiful effects.

While the filters dried, the boys and girls made the bodies for their bats. I quickly cut out some bat bodies out of black construction paper. The children used white crayons to draw mouths and “fangs” on their bats. Googly eyes were added as the final touch. Most chose to go with two eyes, but we also had a few three-eyed bats!

Once everything was dried, a small amount of black pipe cleaner was wrapped around the middle of each colorful coffee filter. This created the wings for the bats. Then the wings were glued to the back of the bat bodies. I used a hot glue gun for this part since we were in a bit of a time crunch. Otherwise, we would have used regular glue.

I really liked seeing the different combination of colors each bat craft had. The faces cracked me up, too! The bats are decorating the windows of the classroom right now, but they’ll be going home next week. A few of the kiddos want to make sure the bats are up for Halloween in their houses!