So, whatcha think? On February 2, will my favorite furry forecaster predict an early spring? I guess I’ll have to wait and see—but not for too long. Groundhog Day is fewer than two weeks away.
Do you typically celebrate Groundhog Day in your classroom? If so, what are your favorite activities? Please share!
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Here are a few groundhog facts for your files:
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Happily,
Diane
We do celebrate the day! No matter what our theme for the week is we take that day or the day closest and have a groundhog day. We graph what we think the answer will be the day before, we ask each kid if they think he will or will not see his shadow then when we come in the next morning we look at the graph and see how many friends agreed with Phil. I have some file folder games, but my favorite is a show box game I made. I took a shoe box lid and all then took five toilet paper rolls cut holes in the box lid so that they would fit into the holes making these the groundhog den openings. I have numbers by the holes 1-5 but you could have them count by twos etc. Then I took a bunch of large brown pompoms glued google eyes and tiny black pompoms on for the nose. I have the kids put the correct number of “groundhogs” in each hole. We also make a groundhog puppet, we glue a groundhog cut out onto a popsicle stick and put it into a brown cone shaped coffee filter with a hold cut at the end for the stick to fit thru. I even have the kids trace the groundhog on one side to make his shadow. (pretty sure I got that idea from mailbox)
I read the book 10 little groundhogs and make a pop up puppet of a groundhog and a papercup with the children.
We made a video of the kids singing a little groundhog song and using their pop-up puppets (we used paper cups with the bottom out, and puppets on sticks.) We read a book about the legend (sorry, can’t remember the name); cut out a groundhog and make a shadow picture; we ALWAYS mark 6 weeks ahead on the calendar so we can check to see if Spring has arrived. If the sidewalks are clear, we go out several times a day and draw our shadows with chalk. One thing we did in years past: we were having a dinosaur unit, and I had an inflatable dinosaur — we set him in the sun on big paper and drew his shadow in the morning, at lunchtime, and just before bus time to see how his shadow changed. Unfortunately, Groundhog day is usually very close to 100 day, so we don’t spend as much time “off-task” (depends on your perspective, right?) as we used to, since we put a lot into our 100-day celebration.
I use a whole week talking about shadows, what makes them and where we can find them. The children make a prediction the day before to see if the groundhog will see his shadow. We make groundhog paper bag puppets, groundhog cupcakes and many shadow pictures. We also walk around the center and see where there are shadows and mark them with chalk. Then we go out several more times during the day and mark where the shadows are each time. The children also play Shadow Tag.
Our pre-k classes don’t celebrate Groundhog Day, but our kinder classes do. Kinder classes normally make groundhog puppets and discuss shadows.
It’s fun to celebrate ground hog day, especially since we aren’t allowed to celebrate so many other fantastic holidays.
My kinders make groundhog puppets with paper cups and popsicle sticks; I like Angie’s coffee filter idea. And the tp tubes/pompon groudhogs for counting skills is adoreable!
I like to trace my students’ profiles off of the overhead projector onto black paper.
We do the paper bag puppets, groundhog cupcakes,the pom pom box counting game and then towards the end of the week we sit each child in front of a wall and shine a light on their profile and trace the image on a piece of black paper with chalk. Then we cut out their shadow and glue it on a bigger piece of white paper. The children and parents have to guess who is who. This also makes a wonderful momento for the parents.
For the last two years I have made the student’s silhouettes. I use the computer projector, and tape a piece of black construction paper on the board. Then I have the child sit infant of the light and I draw their shadow on the paper with pencil. Since I teach younger students I cut out their silhouettes and then post them on colored construction paper. It is fun to watch people as they look for their child’s shadow. They then have a keepsake from Kindergarten.