You’ll love having your own flapping bat craft at your door this Halloween. The kids will have a spooktacular time interacting with it.
Once you’ve made it, which is pretty simple by the way, then hang it up in your doorway. Watch as the children pull a chord and the bat flaps its wings and looks like it’s flying.
The oooo and aaaahs you’ll get will be worth the effort.
Flapping bat craft materials
- Light cardboard (we recycled some of our bigger birthday cards)
- Fishing line
- A needle
- black paint
- A fairly straight stick
- String
- Scissors
- A paddle pop stick
- A good craft glue
- paper clips
- Beads or (fishing) sinkers
- Free downloadable template (below)
How to make the flapping bat craft
Make your bat
1. Print out the bat template. Bat Wing template
2. Cut out the template and use it to cut two wings and two bat bodies out of the cardboard
3. Put the template back over the bat body cardboard and using scissors or a stanley knife, cut along the length of the line. Do this for both bat bodies. Put some more cardboard underneath to ensure you don’t cut the workbench.
4. Fold in the rectangle edges of the bat wings.
5. Slip the wings through the slot you cut in the body and glue them down (see the image below)
6. Cut a piece of fishing line about 20 cm long. Tie a bead or sinker on the end of the fishing line and tuck the other end of the fishing line into one of the slots in the bat body. Glue the two bat bodies together. I slipped paper clips over the two sides of the bat body to ensure they stuck together very well.
7. Cut the ends off a paddle pop stick to make two ears. Glue them onto the bat.
8. Once the glue is completely dry, paint the bat with black paint (or any colour, really). You can also paint on some eyes here too.
Hang up your flapping bat
9. Cut four equal pieces of fishing line approximately 20 cm long. Thread two pieces of fishing line on each wing, about 2cm from the body (see image). I threaded the fishing line through a needle and then the needle through the wings. I tied a knot three times in the same spot on fishing line under the wings to make it hold, similar to how you’d secure your cotton if you were hand stitching.
10. Tie the other ends of the fishing line to the stick ( see image above). Try to make sure you tie it in a similar length to all the fishing line so it balances. Tip: If the wings aren’t sitting straight, you’ll either have to tie the fishing line again, so that it balances or replace the bead with something heavier like a sinker. We ended up having to replace the bead with sinkers.
11. Attach one long piece of string to each side of the stick to make a handle.
12. Pull on the string to make your bat flap its wings!
I’m hoping we can store this somewhere and bring it out every year. Perhaps we can make one each year and end up with a colony of coloured bats at our front door. Either way, this flapping bat craft has been a hit with my girls this Halloween and I’m hoping any visitors enjoy it too.
More batacular craft and activities
That is super cool. Love the video of how it works as well! Will be adding this to my round up for sure!!! Thanks for the link too! 🙂
Thanks Steph. I love the little video too. It’s so cool that I can actually SHOW you how it works. Yippee. I might use these more often!
I love your printables – and this bat looks like so much fun!
Thanks Jody. It was, I mean, it is fun! The girls love it.
Thank you for sharing this lovely bat craft idea. We are doing a Bat Study so this is going to be a great way for us to end our lesson.
You’re welcome! I hope they love them too.
Super cool and super creepy! 🙂
He he. Thanks Carmody. I love bats so much. We have the lovely fruit bats here and they have the most adorable faces!
Oh so cool!
I discovered a little bat flapping around our hall way the other night. It’s the first time we’ve had one inside and it was kinda freaky but also REALLY cool!
That would have been so cool. I hope you didn’t touch it though. How did you get him out?
I couldn’t have caught him even if I had tried… so amazing at how well they navigate. We have had plenty of birds in our house that flap around and crash into everything, but the bat was silent and swooped gracefully in and out of door ways… it was amazing to watch.
In the end I closed all but the front door and just stood and watched it do a single pass up and then down the hallway and then out into the night!
That would have been just wonderful to watch Kate! You explained it so well, it felt like it was flying in my house!
I love this, thank you for sharing the instructions!
That looks so cool! Clever girl! I’m now imagining doing some of these with the same wing technique but using toilet rolls for the bodies of some 3D flapping birds. Imagine a whole row perched on a branch, covered in feathers and flapping! Ok, now I’m going over board, haha, but it’d be cool. (I’ve set you a challenge). 😉 Love these!
I love it! We seem to have a family of microbats in our roof that are taking turns coming inside!! Miss Daisy would be very interested in this craft at the moment I think! 🙂
That animated pic is so cool Penny! I’ve seen this post on Pinterest everywhere. Totally rocks. xo P
My sons are TOTALLY into bats now – they’ve seen them at night and are fascinated. I’m sure they would love to make one of these, thanks so much for creating this fun activity!
When I first saw this on Pinterest I thought it was real!!! Love that video Penny.
It looks fab. What a great deco to have at the front door.
Could you elaborate on step 6, please? As it is written it sound like there is just one string to pull and that it only goes through on one side…I’ve tried it as written and through other means, but it’s not flapping for me! Thanks!
Hi Juli,
I’m sorry your having trouble with the instructions. If you look at the image in step 5 you’ll see the to halves of the bat. All you need to do it glue them together but ensure the fishing line with the sinker on the end is also stuck inside those two hales. When it’s dry you should be able to pull down on the sinker and that’s what makes it flap its wings. Please don’t hesitate to ask me should you still be having trouble.
Hi Juli,
I’m sorry your having trouble with the instructions. If you look at the image in step 5 you’ll see the to halves of the bat. All you need to do it glue them together but ensure the fishing line with the sinker on the end is also stuck inside those two halves. When it’s dry you should be able to pull down on the sinker and that’s what makes it flap its wings. Please don’t hesitate to ask me should you still be having trouble.