Groundhogs!!!

So, we began this unit back on Wednesday january 29 because we were going to be out of school on Thursday, January 30 and Friday, January 31 for Parent Teacher Conferences. It seems like years ago when we began this unit!!

So on Thursday, we discussed what happens on Groundhog's Day. I then ask them to make a prediction about whether or not they think the groundhog will see his shadow! After much thought and they were ready, I asked them to take a yellow piece of paper if they thought he would see his shadow and a white piece of paper if they thought he would not see his shadow.

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Those with the yellow paper will make a sun and put their name on it and those with the white paper would make a cloud and put their name on it. Then came the fun part, we were going to make a graph on the floor to view and discuss our prediction data! here is the graph we made:

According to our graph, 14 of us predicted he will see his shadow and 4 of us predicted he will not see his shadow. They were very excited and couldn't wait to see the groundhog on Sunday.

We then displayed our data on our classroom door! Here is our door:

After the graphing activity, they made groundhogs by following me. Everybody received the same amount of paper. They received 1 9X 12 piece of brown paper cut in half, 1 12X18 sheet of construction paper (any color), 1 square of white paper and 1 square of black paper.

First, they take one of the pieces of brown paper and hold it tall like a tree. They cut out a large brown hill and glue it to the 12 X 18 piece of paper. They then cut  circle out of the other piece of brown paper and using the scraps cut out two circles for his ears. Glue these onto the 12 X 18 piece of paper. Then have them fold the white paper in half and cut out two circles for his eyes and then do the same thing with the black paper. Glue to groundhog. Add details to the groundhog by using your crayons.

Here are our groundhogs:

I absolutely love these! :)

We were supposed to finish this on Monday but thanks to Mother nature, we had a snow day! So we finished it on Tuesday (today) instead. We talked about the groundhog during our morning meeting. we then watched a few videos from our groundhog padlet. we then read two emergent readers about groundhogs and we made these awesome hats!

We ended our day by doing 4 Language Art small group activities and 4 math small group activities! We loved learning about the groundhog!

Click on the groundhog to go to the groundhog padlet I created and used for this unit!