A tunnel and mound set up in our playroom gave us a chance to be groundhogs.
Our favorite book of the week was Ten Grouchy Groundhogs by Kathryn Heling and Deborah Hembrook. We read it over and over again and each picked out the groundhog that best fit our personalities.
"I Spy Shadows" was our table game. We had to match objects on cards to their shadows on the table.
Shadow puppets with our choice of "characters" were made so that we could cast their shadows on the wall. We made them move about and watched their shadows move along with them.
Just like in Nothing Sticks Like a Shadow by Ann Tompet,
we went for a walk and found out that no matter how hard we tried, we could not hide or run away from our shadows.
Bear, in Bear Shadow by Frank Asch, tried to do that same thing. It just can't be done!
Using groundhog puppets with tunnels, we sang and acted out our groundhog song:
I'm a little groundhog in the ground
On February 2nd I come up from the ground.
If I see my shadow it scares me
Back in my mound I go to sleep.
If I don't see my shadow
Springtime's here
Hip hip hooray, we shout and cheer!
Silhouettes are shadows of our profiles. We sat on a chair to make a shadow on the wall. Our shadows were traced to make a silhouette.
They turned out great!
We used a shadow box with a flashlight to cast shadows on the screen of the box.
We discovered that shadows can't be seen without light, so we experimented a bit with light, by playing on a Light Box. We had colored shapes and cups to manipulate so that we could change the color of light.
On Thursday, the groundhogs came out of their "mounds" to look for their shadows. Our prediction was that they would not see it because it was a really cloudy day. But, in places where groundhogs live, they saw their shadows and went back to sleep the rest of the winter- 6 more weeks!
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