Fun with Shadows on Groundhog's Day!

Today at preschool we learned all about Groundhog's Day and shadows.  None of the kids seemed very familiar with the story of Groundhog's Day, so I started off at the beginning  by showing a picture of a real groundhog.

Most of them thought it was a beaver, but quickly grew excited as I told them all about groundhogs.  We learned about how they like to burrow under the ground and on Groundhog's Day pop their heads up to see if they can see their shadows.

Then we colored and cut out our own groundhog hats.  It was interesting to me to see how detail oriented all the boys were in their coloring while the girls were much quicker.  They were all a little intimidated by the cutting, but did a great job themselves. 

We also worked on our Groundhog Day books (while the boys finished their hats), to give them some handwriting practice.   

 
After everyone was finished, we put on our groundhog hats and went outside to see if we could see our shadows...

 

BUT it was way more fun to sled for a while first...

until our hands got cold and people got sad...

  

so we hurried up to check for our shadows before we got even colder.  It was a semi-cloudy day, so our shadows were light, but they were definitely there.  Six more weeks of winter!  The kids didn't seem to mind a bit about the extra winter as they skipped up and down the driveway watching their shadows skip with them. 

  

Rachel was particularly excited by the skipping up and down the driveway activity. 

  

Then we went inside and took turns crushing some Oreos into some fake dirt. 

  

Then we used our imaginations and placed our cookie groundhogs into our cupcake burrow with snowy frosting and Oreo dirt on top for the coolest preschool snack ever...or at least this week.  :)  

  

It was a stretch for their imaginations, but they were as thrilled as can be with the fun snack. 

  

After our freezing cold experience with barely noticeable shadows outside, we eagerly grabbed our flashlights and headed to the warm confines of our bathroom to have more fun with shadows.  We tried to make animal shapes and took note of the fact that an object has to be in front of the light in order to make a shadow. 

  

After that, we headed out to the living room for a quick game of "Beaver, beaver, groundhog", which happens to be exactly like, "Duck, duck, goose".   We had to institute a rule in the middle that each person had to pick someone of the opposite gender, so we didn't get stuck in too much of a rut.  They, of course, had a great time and burned off some more energy! 

  

Last thing before lunch we put our cutting skills to use once again and created these little groundhog burrows.  Now you see them....

Now you don't!

  

Then the kids spontaneously named their little groundhogs and started playing pretend with them.
 

It was quite cute to see how enamored they were with them...

  

and to see their imagination shining through.  Cute kids! 

During lunch time we did a little more reading practice and made sure we used our manners, since they seemed to have a hard time with that at Simone's house last week.  They did great!

It was another fun day at preschool!