Category: Learning

On February 2, a groundhog is said to forecast the weather by looking for his shadow. If it’s sunny out, and he sees his shadow, we’re in for six more weeks of winter. On the other hand, a cloudy Groundhog Day is supposed to mean that we will have an early spring.  We celebrated Groundhog Day by learning all kinds of amazing groundhog facts – including what they eat, where they live, and how they make it through tough winters!

We also went outside to see if we could see our shadows, and we did not. . . so we predict that we will have an early spring!

This made us curious about shadows, so we learned how to make shadow puppets with our hands.   

Try this activity at home.  It was fun!

We read the book, “The Mitten” by Jan Brett.  This book is about a boy named Nicki who drops his white mitten in the snow and leaves it behind.

One by one, woodland animals find it and crawl in; first, a curious mole, then a rabbit, a hedgehog, an owl, a badger and a fox, each one larger than the last. Finally, a big brown bear is followed in by a tiny brown mouse and with an itchy nose. Ah-choo!

We practiced retelling the story by putting the animals in the correct order.

Ask me to retell the story for you.

We read a delightful book by Leo Lionni called A Color of His Own.  This book is about a little chameleon who notices that he does not have a color of his own like other animals.  The chameleon is sad because he is always changing color depending on where he is standing.  Finally, the chameleon finds a friend who teaches him that is OK to be different.  We loved the message that true identity comes from who you are inside.

The children wanted to create their own chameleon.  We used one of the elements of design: line  (e.g., thick, thin, wavy, zigzag, broken, spiral, jagged, etc.) to draw the background.  Then we painted it with watercolor paint.

Ask me what kinds of lines I used for my chameleon.