Looking for a bat STEM activity that’s easy to set up but gives students plenty of room to design, test, andLooking for a bat STEM activity that’s easy to set up but gives students plenty of room to design, test, and improve? Wings Wanted turns a classic paper airplane challenge into a Halloween engineering activity for grades 2–8.
Students start with a wingless bat body and design wings that will help their bat fly as far as possible. You can also test for accuracy or even flight style, making it easy to adjust the challenge for different ages and learning goals.
Although Wings Wanted makes a fun Halloween bat activity, it doesn’t have to be used only for Halloween. Pair it with a study of bats, animal adaptations, flight, or ecosystems for an engaging bat STEM challenge any time you’re studying these fascinating flying mammals.
How This Bat STEM Activity Works
Wings Wanted is essentially a paper airplane STEM challenge with a bat-themed twist. Students start with a wingless bat body template and design a set of wings that will help their bat fly the maximum distance possible.
Distance is an easy way to measure results, but you can change the goal to suit your students. Try testing for target accuracy or even awarding style points for loops and other interesting flight patterns.
As with all of my STEM challenges, there isn’t one “right” design students are trying to recreate. The problem-solving happens as they develop their own ideas, test them, and make improvements based on what they observe.
Make the Bat STEM Challenge Easier or Harder
One of the nice things about Wings Wanted is how easy it is to adjust for different ages and abilities.
For younger students, keep the challenge simple and focus on designing wings that help the bat fly. Students can test their designs, compare results, and make changes to improve their bat’s flight.
For older students or students who are ready for more complexity, add criteria and constraints. For example, you might:
- Have the bat carry a small piece of cargo, such as a paper clip.
- Remove 25% of the available paper before students begin building.
- Require the bat body to remain visible.
- Test for accuracy instead of distance.
One tip: Give students scratch paper for their early designs. Repeated folding and unfolding weakens the paper, so students can experiment with their ideas first and save the bat body template for their final design.
Not Just a Halloween Bat Activity
Bats aren’t just for Halloween!
If Halloween activities aren’t a fit for your classroom or school, Wings Wanted can also work with a study of bats, animal adaptations, ecosystems, or flight.
That makes it easy to use this bat STEM activity beyond October. The engineering challenge itself doesn’t need to change. Simply change the way you introduce the problem to your students.
Watch the Wings Wanted Bat STEM Activity
Want to see the challenge in action? In the video below, I walk through the materials, setup, ways to simplify the challenge for younger students, and options for adding complexity for older students.
Prefer to read? I’ve included the video transcript farther down the page.
Wings Wanted Video:
Get the Wings Wanted STEM Challenge
Want the ready-to-use version? The complete Wings Wanted STEM Challenge includes the bat body templates, student handouts, criteria and constraints, teacher tips, modifications, extensions, and more. You can also get Wings Wanted as part of the 6-activity Halloween STEM Challenge Bundle.
More Halloween STEM Activities
Looking for more ideas for October? I’ve rounded up 20 Halloween STEM Activities with engineering challenges and other STEM activities you can use throughout the month.
👉 See all 20 Halloween STEM Activities:
Wings Wanted STEM Challenge Video Transcript
Yay, Halloween, it’s my favorite. I know it’s a little bit early, but I have five STEM challenges to share with you for Halloween, and if I don’t start now I won’t have time to finish before Halloween.
So challenge one of five is called Wings Wanted, and it’s basically a paper airplane challenge. You’re gonna really love it, it’s straightforward, simple materials, and the kids really love it. So I know not everybody is allowed to do Halloween activities at their school, so don’t call it a Halloween activity. Your cross-curricular connections are gonna be even more important if you’re not allowed to do Halloween activities. A bat is just an animal, so do a food web, food chain, bats in the ecosystem, read Stellaluna, there are a lot of different options here.
0:48 – STEM Challenge Cycle & Tips
Let’s take a quick look at the materials and the STEM Challenge Cycle. This is a STEM Challenge Cycle you should follow for every challenge. I’ve defined each step in another video, you can click on the title now to see the cycle explained.
If you’ve ever done origami or made paper airplanes and made some mistakes before, you noticed that after too many folds and refolds the paper sort of loses its integrity. So because of this you’re gonna wanna make sure to give students scratch paper for their initial designs, and then they’ll use the bat body templates as their final. So for measuring results on this I usually just go for max distance, but you might also wanna try to set up targets and go for accuracy, or even give style points for loops and that kind of thing.
1:32 – Adjust Difficulty of the Challenge
So there are a few ways to make this a little bit more difficult if you have older students and you wanna challenge them just a little bit more. You can ask them to include cargo, so they can have to maybe even tape, like, a little candy corn, or paper clip might be easier. Also, you can ask them to remove, like actually cut out, 25% of the paper, which requires them to actually do the measurements and figure out how much paper they need to remove. You can also make a challenge requirement that the bat body be visible, either underneath the wings or on top of the wings, as you see here in this one. And then this one’s actually built the other way, so he’s flying face down.
So you already have the basics in order to conduct this challenge on your own, but this is also available as a resource in my store, and it includes a lot of extras, like the bat body templates themselves, as well as student handouts, additional modifications, cross-curricular connections, and more. So make sure you check it out.
2:28- Resource preview
Your time is valuable, why not save some of it with this resource? It contains everything you need, including modifications for use with second through eighth graders. You’ll still need to gather the simple materials of course, but the hard parts are done. You’ll get Aligned Next Generation Science Standards, links to my STEM challenge professional development videos to help you get the most from each challenge, and the Wings Wanted materials list. In Teacher Tips you’ll find premise and setup, how to increase or decrease difficulty through the criteria and constraints list, measuring results, and cross-curricular extension suggestions, which will be especially helpful if you need to prove this is not just a Halloween activity. You’ll find an editable Criteria & Constraints List, so you can tailor the challenge to your students, and you’ll also get bat body templates.
For student handouts there are two versions, four-page expanded room for response for younger students, and a two-page condensed space paper saver version. You’ll also find a set of group discussion questions. In the Extension Handouts you’ll find math extension and process flow templates. This resource is available individually, and as part of the discounted Halloween and Mega STEM Challenge bundles. Links can be found in the description bellow the video.
So again, this is a great challenge because it’s so simple, straightforward, very inexpensive materials, and the kids really love it. Be sure you like and subscribe, and come back next week for challenge two of five, Bone Bridge.
Save This Bat STEM Activity for Later
