Groundhog Day

We wanted to talk a little bit about Groundhog Day today.  The kids learned a song.
"Here's a little groundhog,
Who comes out every year.
When he sees his shadow,
He knows spring is not here."

We made a pop up groundhog to go with our song.

The kids also listened to the story, "Groundhog Gets a Say."  It was a wonderful book telling us loads of information about groundhogs.  We are now "marmotologists," or people who learn about groundhogs.  We know that groundhogs have a special way to dig their burrows to keep there underground homes from flooding.  We also learned that groundhogs teeth keep growing and growing except in the winter when they hibernate and everything slows down.
Then we acted like groundhogs, eating grass and grains in the summer, digging a burrow, hibernating and using our eyes and noses to poke out of our burrows to look for predators.
It was a fun afternoon activity, capped off by a graph predicting if the groundhog would see his shadow.  Most of the class predicted no, as they are hoping for an early spring.
Keep your fingers crossed!