HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY

The timing was perfect this year since Feb. 2nd, GROUNDHOG'S DAY, fell on a Tuesday. We were able to introduce the legend of the furry critter who crawls out of his burrow to sees his shadow (or not). After discussing the story, we took turns scurrying in and out of our own "burrows," turning our flashlight off/on. As always, we encouraged the children to listen to the news or look in the newspaper to see what happened to our local groundhog. They frequently return to school with their own "version" of the news.  We sang this little ditty daily to add to the fun.

Little, Groundhog, Little Groundhog

Take a peek, Take a peek

If you see your shadow, the winter WON'T be over

For six more weeks, six more weeks.

We learned that groundhogs are VEGETARIANS and had a lively discussion as to what that means.  We encourage you to send in yummy and HEALTHY veggies for our little groundhogs to snack on when it is your turn for snack.  As a matter of fact, we are planning on sending home a Groundhog Salad note next week.  If you can, kindly send in one vegetable to use in our communal salad.   We will scrub, cut and prepare the salad ourselves…sometimes that makes it more appealing. Yes, we realize that it is often hard to get young children to eat their "greens." Don't give up. Continued exposure and changing tastes are bound to pay off some day soon. We do try to encourage good eating habits at the snack table.

The groundhog discussion is really just a lead into a science lesson on SHADOWS. We learned that we need a light source, be it the sun, moon or artificial lighting to form shadows. Since the sun wasn’t much help to us this week, we put our flashlight to good use.  It helped us force our pretend groundhogs back into their burrows, it shone on us as we did shadow dance (following our leaders actions) and it’s beam was useful as we hid mystery objects behind a screen and tried to guess what they were by looking at the shadow.

As the days become sunnier (we hope), encourage your child to notice where his/her shadow forms. The location of the sun/moon/light has everything to do with it.  They love nothing better than making their shadow “obey” their commands.

FYI: We had our PBIS celebration this week.  Everyone enjoyed the face painting done by the 6^th, 7^th, 8^th graders.  Many recognized a friend, siblilng or cousin and that made it all the more fun.

THANKS for adhering to the snack calendar.  We already have more than we need for a while.  If you’d prefer, yo can send in inexpensive napkins instead, for we do go through them rapidly.  (Thanks, Angeli)

NEXT WEEK we will celebate HEARTS and FRIENDSHIP in conjunction with Valentine’s Day.  This will be our final classroom party (Feb 12th).  Remember that we are discouraging sweet treats.  Everyone is welcome to join us.  We always need help with valentine distrubution.