Groundhog Day Activity for Kindergarten

As you may remember from my last post (with the free Groundhog Day worksheets), I am secretly a fan of Groundhog day.  I won’t tell if you won’t tell…  (Okay, maybe the secret is out that I like Groundhog day.)   ANYWAY, I have an awesome Groundhog Day activity for kindergarten...but, really it can be modified for different levels and abilities.   I did the activity with my children ages 2, 5, 7,  and 9.  This is a great activity to build reading fluency..  help children ready things more quickly and accurately, and, have a fun time doing it!

Groundhog Day Activity

First we read a Groundhog Day book.  There are a few books we love:
Substitute Groundhog: -This is a cute book about what happens when Groundhog is sick on his big day:  It’s almost Groundhog Day! But this year Groundhog is not feeling well. Dr. Owl diagnoses him with the flu and orders two days of bed rest. Then Groundhog has in idea–he can hire a substitute! Maybe Squirrel can be the substitute, or Eagle, or Bear.
OR
Groundhog Day! by Gail Gibbons is a cute book that is perfect to help explain Groundhog Day.  Every February 2, people all across the country wonder about the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. Will he see his shadow on that day or won’t he? Will spring come early or late? Here is information about Groundhog Day, its origins, and the animal at the center of this delightful annual event.

Next we colored a picture of a groundhog. (Even daddy got into the fun).  Then we cut out and taped the groundhog to a pencil. (We would have used a Popsicle stick but we couldn’t find any..)

I then made flashcards with sight words on them.  My 5 year old is currently on Day 20 of our learn to read free program.  He recently learned the sight words “up” and “down”.  This activity was a perfect opportunity to practice those sight words, as well as a few others.

We put a whole in the bottom of a Solo Cup (This is not easy to do, I would recommend using a styrofoam cup).  Then, we put the groundhog on the pencil down through the cup.  I then held up flashcards of the words up and down and my children had to move the groundhog up or down accordingly.

We also did this with the sight words “in” and “out”.  Then, we added a smaller groundhog and added big and little.  And we did big up, little up, big down, little down, etc.  For the older children, they colored two groundhogs:  one with winter clothing and one with spring clothing.  We pasted them on opposite sides of the pencil and we would do winter and spring. My two older children are learning Spanish, so we did their activity in Spanish!  invierno, o primavera?  arriba o abajo?

I then wanted to make the activity more kinesthetic.  I would hold up the flash cards and the children would bend down or jump up whether the sight word said up or down.  If the sight word said ‘in’ they jumped forward, and ‘out’ jumped backward.  We also added the word “around”, and they spun around with their groundhogs.

Who knew you could have so much fun with a ground hog?

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