Groundhog Week

This week we were learning about Groundhog Day and shadows.

We started with an activity where my son matched shapes that were white to their black shadows. First, I put the shapes around on the basement floor while he hid his eyes and counted to 15. This was too easy for him. So once he matched all of the shapes to their shadows, he hid his eyes and counted to 15 again.  This time, I hid the black shadow shapes around the room and he had to search for the black shadow shapes. There were some that were too hard for him to find, so I used the words 'hot' and 'cold' to guide him to the next shadow shape.

For our music and movement part of this week, we used scarves that I bought from the dollar store. We found some lanterns and turned off the lights. Once he was ready, we started the music and we danced in front of the lanterns so that he could watch his shadow dancing on the wall.

This was our shadow painting. I cut out the silhouette of a groundhog, placed it on a black piece of paper and he used white paint and a sponge to dab around the groundhogs silhouette. When he lifted up the piece of paper with the groundhog on it, we were left with a really cool groundhog shadow.

 

Our cooking experience this week involved chocolate pudding, chocolate cookies and Teddy grahams.  First, we spooned out the chocolate pudding into the bowl and then we crumbled up chocolate chip cookies and sprinkled the crumbs on top. Finally, we placed four Teddy grahams in the bowl because our number of the week was four so this was yet another way to practice counting.  And just in case you're wondering, we used teddy grahams because they were the closest thing to groundhogs that we could find. And yes, they actually sell these at the dollar store.

Shadow puppets. I used Google images and found some basic shapes that I thought would make good story props. I then cut them out and taped the shapes to large popsicle sticks from the dollar store.  Using a lantern and a blank canvas wall, my son put on a great puppet show.

A science experiment. This was very educational and to the point. You can download a more general form below so that you can adapt the investigation to what you are working on.