Groundhogs and Weather

I personally don't love to focus on the topic of Groundhog's Day, but since it fell on a preschool day this year, we used it as a backdrop for thinking about seasons and weather.

In addition to a nonfiction book about groundhogs and the holiday, we read a (very) silly story called Who Will See Their Shadow This Year? The animals in the story all want spring to come early, but when they see their shadows all sorts of crazy weather comes instead.

My students always laugh at this book when I pull it out, and the fact that it is so silly actually turns out to be a good way to address the idea of whether or not a groundhog can actually predict/create the weather.

We made two different prediction graphs throughout the day. The first one  was for whether or not the groundhog saw his shadow this year, and then we looked up the news to see what happened. Since Phil did NOT see his shadow this year, the superstition goes that it will be an early spring. So we made another graph to predict whether or not Phil's prediction would be correct. Time will tell on that one, but so far, winter is still in full force around here! :)

Here's the beginnings of a groundhog that one student drew in his writing journal. Later he added a shadow.