Bats get printed twice a year for two completely different reasons — as Halloween decorations, and whenever a class reaches nocturnal animals. This free bat coloring book is built to work for both. Nothing in it is frightening: no fangs, no haunted houses, just a cave roost, a mother with her pup, and a page showing how echolocation actually works.
Why none of these bats are scary
Because scary bats only work for two weeks a year. A frightened four-year-old will not colour a page with fangs on it, and a teacher covering nocturnal animals cannot use one. Friendly bats work in October and in a science lesson, and children who find real bats a bit alarming often come round after colouring one.
How echolocation actually works
A bat calls out — usually at a pitch too high for us to hear — and listens for the echo bouncing back off whatever is in front of it. From the delay it works out how far away something is, and from the shape of the echo it can tell a moth from a leaf.
It is fast enough that a bat can catch an insect in complete darkness mid-flight. The arcs on page three are that call going out and coming back. It is one line of explanation and it turns a colouring page into a science lesson your child will repeat to somebody else.
Three things worth knowing
Bats are the only mammals that truly fly. Flying squirrels glide; bats fly properly, with a wing that is closer to a webbed hand than a bird’s wing — the long lines across the wings on these pages are finger bones.
They are not blind. The phrase is simply wrong. Most bats see about as well as we do and use echolocation in addition to sight, not instead of it.
A single small bat can eat over a thousand mosquitoes in one night, which is why people put up bat boxes like the one on page seven.
Colouring tips
Bats are not black. Most are brown, and fruit bats are often reddish or golden. Colouring the body a warm brown and leaving the wings a paler grey or tan makes a much better page than flat black — and the wings are thin enough in real life that light passes through them.
For the night pages, leaving the sky white and colouring only the moon and stars keeps everything readable. A fully coloured dark sky swallows the bat.
Things to make with the finished pages
- Hanging decorations. Cut out the wrapped-wings bat, punch a hole at the top and hang it from a thread.
- Window bats. The night flight page cut out and taped to a window reads well against the light.
- A bat box project. Print page seven, colour it, and use it as the cover for a build plan if you are actually making one.
- Garland. Six copies of the small bat, coloured differently and strung along a thread.