Today we celebrated by learning more about Groundhogs. Did you know that inside their burrows, they create a separate location for sleeping and using the bathroom? This was just one of the very interesting facts our kiddos got a kick out of!
We used a really neat SMART board presentation to introduce the holiday and learn a little more about groundhogs. Then we did a groundhog craft. I got the idea here, but tweaked it a little bit to create the 3-D image in the pictures. The students used black construction paper and white chalk to create the "shadow." We then taped just the feet of the ground hog (face down) to the page and taped a pipe cleaner to the back so it can stand up and see it's shadow.
We read the story "Groundhog Goes Outside" from readinga-z.com as a class and played a memory game matching objects with their shadows.
The kids wrapped up the morning with writing. They had to answer the question "If you were a groundhog, what would you want to see? Shadow or no shadow?" We reviewed writing a complete sentence using the words and details from the question. Then to see how well they understood the legend of groundhog day, they had to draw a spring or winter picture depending on their desire.
The students homework for the weekend is to try and find out if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not. We graphed their predictions on the SMART board and they can't wait to see if they were right. They voted 5-4 that he would see his shadow.
