New draft Experiences and Outcomes
Our Living World - Using my senses

Early Level - I am becoming more aware of my own senses and can use them to explore the world around me.   SCN 010S

First Level - Through a range of activities I have explored my senses and can discuss their reliability. SNC 113S

Bat and Moth Activity
Form a large circle with a group of pupils and choose one of the pupils to be the bat. They should stand in the middle of the circle and put a blindfold on.

Choose another 3-5 pupils to be moths. When the moths enter the circle the bat must try to catch them. Whenever the bat calls out ‘moth’ the moths must reply ‘bat’. Explain to the group that every time the bat calls out ‘moth’ it represents their sonar signal hitting their prey; the bat sends out this signal to see if there is anything there, the signal bounces off objects and is returned. The return signal is the cry ’bat’. When the moths call out ‘bat’ the bat knows they are near and tries to catch them to eat for supper! The bat tracks down the whereabouts of the moth by listening carefully to where the replies are coming from. It takes good concentration to be a successful bat!

The remaining pupils in the circle act as a buffer to stop the bat from tripping over or banging into anything. The moths and bat must stay within the circle.

The activity can be made more challenging by restricting the movements of the bat and moth, i.e. the bat can take two steps after it’s made its call and the moths can take one.

Bat Scent Activity

Mother bats will leave their young hanging in a colony of many baby bats. When they come back, one of the ways they identify their young is by using their sense of smell.

Ahead of the activity the teacher should have film containers, one for every pupil. The film containers should contain pieces of card that have been coloured with scented markers. Make sure to recolour the pieces ahead of time. Make sure there are two containers of each scent. There needs to be one blindfold for every Mother bat.

Pupils should choose a partner and decide who will be the Mother and who will be the Baby. The parent and baby bats will choose a pair of containers containing the same scent.

The Baby bats sit in a circle and the Mother bats form a circle on the outside, around the Baby bats.

The Mother bats then put on the bat blindfold mask.

The Mothers must locate their baby by finding the same scent container.

For more information about bats visit:
http://www.bats.org.uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/nature/species/pages/pipistrelle.shtml

http://www.jwaller.co.uk/batgroup/pipistrelle.asp

http://www.batdetective.com/

http://www.snh.org.uk/wildlifecrimeschools/documents/Bats%20Leaflet.pdf

An interesting extension activity can be found at: http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm The vOICe Learning Edition translates arbitrary video images from a regular PC camera into sounds. This means that you can see with your ears, whenever you want to. With a notebook PC or UMPC you can even go mobile. How well you can learn to see with your ears is something that only you can find out, but now you can indeed find out and learn through this Learning Edition software, for free! It is hoped that seeing with sound will not only find many practical uses, but that extensive usage may also lead to visual experiences that truly have the distinctive subjective "feel" of vision. This, however, remains to be established through the reports of blind users.

Try out this YouTube video - Great Britain Blind football team qualifies for Paralympic Games in Beijing (Inside Sport: Des Kelly tries blind football)

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