Groundhog Day!

It's Groundhog Day and we've been learning all about these furry little critters. We watched a short video clip of a groundhog in the wild. We talked about the tradition of having the groundhog come out of his burrow on Groundhog Day to see if he sees his shadow. We checked out diagrams of a groundhog burrow and even learned they dig an area for a bathroom! We graphed our predictions of whether or not we thought he would see his shadow. 13 students thought he would see his shadow and 7 thought he would not.

We made puppets out of paper lunch bags.

We played a fun game called "Danger Ranger". We asked 2 students to be the "Danger Ranger" groundhogs who would be the groundhogs who were, essentially, the "lookouts". 2 Students had stuffed animal toys that were predators. We place hula hoops on the floor for the burrow holes and the rest of the class were groundhogs in the burrows. The Danger Rangers signaled with squeals or squeaks (none of my students could whistle) to the rest that the coast was clear and the groundhogs could go out into the woods to look for food. When the predators came out, the Danger Rangers stood by the burrows and squeaked loudly to alert the rest to rush home to the burrow before the dangerous predators could get there. I had the kids crawl to make it more difficult. We switched roles each round so everyone could have a turn to be Danger Rangers.

One morning this week before the students arrived, I hid 2 paper groundhogs in the class and had a "groundhog hunt".

Yesterday, we made groundhog faces.

Today, we stapled these to headbands to wear on our heads.

We later checked the predictions of Puxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania and, of course, General Beauregard Lee in Atlanta. Hooray!!!! Neither one saw their shadow, so Spring is on it's way!


Some of my favorite groundhog books: