Happy Groundhog Day 2011

Today is Groundhog Day, and I fully expected 6 more weeks of winter! I can’t even recall the last time we didn’t get 6 more weeks of winter. Don’t get me wrong I love spring and summer, I actually love all of the seasons equally and I live in a state that displays all of the seasons beautifully. If we are going to have winter though I don’t feel it’s complete unless we get at least 1.5 – 2ft of snow on the ground! Not that I enjoy having the chaos of snow days, the on and off of snow gear, or shoveling my extremely long drive way, but there is a certain kind of beauty, serene feeling that comes from a blanket of snow..white trees..and hot chocolate! Well what does Punxsutawney Phil know anyway? Still in my own little world singing “Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow…..”.

Well, since my Bubba (4) is on his off day from preschool and needs something to keep him busy I figured we would craft up something to teach and celebrate Groundhogs Day!
This is what you will need:
(4) Popsicle sticks
(1) Plastic Cup
Felt (5) colors brown, black, white, yellow and another color
Hot glue gun
Wiggly Eyes

First we are going to make our groundhog by covering one stick in brown felt, add ears, mouth, wiggly eyes and tail. Then cover a stick in black with ears and tail just like your groundhog w/no eyes and all black. This is the shadow! Like so:

Yeah apparently groundhogs have belly buttons or so I'm told *smile*

Next cut a sun out of yellow, I cut two of the same one for the front and back of my stick. Then we are going to cut a cloud out of white or you could use gray. Again I cut two one for the front and back of my stick. Since I am using white I chalked around the cloud to try and make it more cloud like! Like so:

Finally, I covered my cup with felt. Make sure you cut your felt a little higher than the cup, so that you can wrap the felt over the rim of the cup. Make (4) slits in the bottom of your cup and insert your sticks. (Note to self..I used a plastic creamer container. Cutting the top off easy as pie..cutting slits in the bottom…not so much) Like so:

Now use your puppet cup to demonstrate shadows and how when the sun is out the groundhog sees its shadow, however when it is cloudy there is less of a chance the groundhog will see its shadow. While we were making this we discussed what it means because the groundhog did not see his shadow and what it means when he does, and I drilled him on this several times! Here he is entertaining me with his show *smile*:

**Notes: Make sure all of your puppets fit inside your cup. Also, after we completed this *not pictured* we drew a sun on the bottom of the sun stick, a cloud on the bottom of the cloud stick, and so on this was so Bubba could know which stick he was controlling!

Thanks for stopping by and blog hop on *smile*

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