In honor of Groundhog Day tomorrow, the students participated in fun Groundhog Day activities such as learning a cute song about the groundhog popping up out of his hole and predicting the weather for the remainder of winter. The children learned the legend that if the groundhog sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of cold winter weather, but if he does not see his shadow, then we will be "springing into spring". They really enjoyed creating their own groundhog puppets to go with the song! (Featured above are Cayden, Stefano, and Aaron showing off their hard work) Other activities that the students participated in were: watching an educational (non-fiction) video on Discovery Education all about the tradition of Groundhog Day in Punxsutawny, Pennsylvania, took a short quiz on what they learned, read a non-fiction book that also explained the tradition, titled The Groundhog Book by Kathleen Pedersen, as well as a fictional text called Double Trouble Groundhog Day by Bethany Roberts. Lastly, we checked the weather forecast for tomorrow and discovered that it will be snowing in Punxsutawny. Some children made the observation that it can snow even while it is slightly sunny out, so the class was torn with their predictions about whether Phil will see his shadow or not tomorrow. The picture below is of our hall display (complete with G-3 hand-crafted groundhogs). The children took turns placing their groundhogs on the display based on their predictions of whether Phil "Will" or "Will Not" see his shadow. Afterwards, we discussed how many children predicted each possibility, and we discovered that more students felt that Phil will not see his shadow tomorrow - welcoming an early spring! G-3's homework for this weekend is to check the news tomorrow to see if their prediction came true, and to report back to the rest of the class on Monday with their results. Happy Groundhog Day G-3!
|
AuthorMs. Fetters :-) Archives
November 2015
Categories |