1-2-3 Come Do Some Groundhog Day Activities With Me

Do you read ”Who Will See Their Shadow This Year?” by Jerry Pallotta?
It’s one of my students’ favorite Groundhog Day stories and perfect for practicing the “sequencing and retelling a story” standards. 

With that in mind, I designed this quick, easy and fun ”Who Will See Their Shadow?” “slider” craftivity, which will help your students retell the story in chronological order.   

The gist: A variety of animals are sick of winter and anxious for spring. Since the groundhog is sleeping, they wonder if they can make it come sooner by seeing their shadows. 

Each one takes a turn, causing all kinds of weather from a hurricane to a tornado, which makes this a great story to review all kinds of weather with your kiddos as well.

There are 3 outside slider options to choose from. Pick your favorite or give children a choice.

There are also 2 slider strip options: one with just the animal graphics, and the other with the animals and their weather word.

For example, when the chicken saw her shadow it rained; when the polar bear saw his shadow there was a blizzard.

Students color the animals on the “slider strip” then cut and glue it together.

As they pull on the end of the “slider-strip” the various animal characters go through the “window”, so that children can take turns retelling the story to a partner or reading buddy, then take their craftivity home to share with their family, once again practicing these standards.

Even if you don't have time for everyone to make a slider, make one for yourself, as it's a great tool for reviewing a story.

I introduce the lesson by reading the book ”Who Will See Their Shadow?”, then share my completed "slider craft” with my students.

So that you can quickly, and easily make an example, I’ve included full-color patterns.

After I read the story, we retell the tale together, using the picture prompts on my slider.
I have them guess which animal character they think comes next, before I pull the picture through the “window”.

My students now know what’s expected of them, and are very excited to transition to making a “Shadow” storytelling slider of their own.

Storytelling sliders are also an easy & interesting way to assess comprehension.

I’ve included a “Let’s sequence the story” activity for this, where students color and trim the picture “windows” then glue them in the correct order on their worksheet.

There’s also a, “Here’s What Happened…” writing prompt worksheet, (BW & color) as another way to check comprehension, plus practice sequential writing, hopefully using a variety of ordinal numbers and other transitions. 

Today's featured FREEBIE also has a Groundhog theme.

Click the link for the quick, easy & fun "Fickle Phil" Groundhog Day lunch bag craft. 

Well that's it for now.  Thanks for stopping by.  I hear the snowplows zipping up and down the roads, sure wouldn't want that "way too early" morning job. 

Wishing you a prosperous day. 

"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face." -Unknown

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1-2-3 Come Do Some Groundhog Day Activities With Me!

I take advantage of all of the February holidays to practice a variety of skills with an interesting theme.  One of our favorites is Groundhog Day. I'll be featuring 3 of these groundhog-themed activities on the blog today.

"Punxsutaney Punctuation With Phil", features 18, groundhog-themed, sentence cards, which are a quick, easy and fun way to review some groundhog information, as well as rules for appropriate grammar. (Capitalization & end punctuation.)

Read the cards together as a whole group to practice a lot of sight words.

Choose a student to come up and using a dry erase marker, circle letters that should be capitalized and then add end punctuation. (period, question mark & exclamation point).

You can do this on a whiteboard, with a pocket chart or pass one card out to each child, to correct.

After everyone has shared their card, have students choose 3-6 cards and rewrite the sentences correctly.

I've provided 2 sizes of mini "fix the sentence" cards for this, which makes a nice Daily 5 word work activity too. 

Next up is the jumbo, Groundhog Number Fun Packet.  

It's a whopping 109 pages, and chock full of a huge variety of activities with a groundhog theme; many are “Print & Go” or require just a bit of prep.

Pick and choose what’s appropriate for your kiddos (PK-1st) and use the activities for table top lessons, morning work, a sub folder, homework, early finishers, and assessing..

The packet includes an assortment of games like “Kaboom!”, “Stack the Hats”, “ I Spy”, “Memory Match”, “I Have; Who Has?” “What’s Missing?” “Race Your Groundhog to 100”, and “Puzzles On A Roll”, along with a 3-page tip list of what to do with the two sets of number cards.

There are also some center activities as well: “Clothespin Clip”, “Sorting With Odd Todd & Even Steven”, plus a 6 piece puzzle that can also be played as a dice game.

Besides that puzzle, I’ve also included 21 of my popular number “strip” puzzles.

They come in vertical as well as horizontal, and help practice sequencing numbers from 1-10, counting backwards from 10-1, plus skip counting by 2s, 3s, 5s, & 10s.

I’ve also included an emergent reader plus 2 different “flip” booklets. One includes 10 frames, and the other has options for counting to 10 or 20.

There are 3 “slider” craftivity options too. Sliders are an interesting way to practice numbers & counting, as well as a quick, easy & fun way to whole group assess.

I’ve included slider “strips” for counting from 1-10, 1-30, counting backwards from 10-1 and 20-1, plus skip counting by 2s, 3s, 5,s & 10s.

There are also a variety of worksheets that practice numbers and counting to 10, 50, 100, & 120, as well as graphing 2D shapes, tally marks, plus greater & less than, and simple addition.  And finally a certificate of praise.

If you're studying blends and digraphs with your kiddos, there's no better day than Groundhog Day for some great GR word work.

I've given the packet a groundhog theme, as the "Woodchuck Word Work packet", provides a wonderful variety of activities for Groundhog Day, including some tongue twisting fun, perfect for Daily 5 or your language arts block.

However, you can use it anytime, not just for Groundhog Day, as the compound word activities, as well as the GR consonant blend activities are very comprehensive.

The packet includes:

* Compound word activities: Games, word cards, worksheets, plus a "sunny" emergent reader flip booklet featuring 65 Dolch sight words, as well as 18 compound words, with "sun" as the root word.

The emergent reader, comes with 22 matching puzzle cards with colorful sunglasses on them, perfect for an independent center activity.

* There are also 42 (sets of 3), groundhog compound word cards to use as puzzles and for playing a variety of games with.
I've also included an alphabetical list of over 1,000 compound words that you can refer to, plus a cover to make an "I Spy 100 Compound Words For 100 Day" booklet.

* The packet also practices the GR consonant blend with a variety of activities for that.
* There's an alphabetical list of 92 GR consonant blend words, plus ...
* 92 GR consonant blend mini word cards, along with a "Feed the Greedy Groundhog's Grumbling Tummy" craftivity.

*There's also a set of alphabet cards, and a variety of worksheets, a graphic organizer which practices adjectives, plus some bookmarks, a word search, tongue twisters, as well as a "How many words can you make?" using the letters in groundhog game.  

As you can see I've packed in a huge variety of word work activities.

The featured FREEBIE today is "Fickle Phil".  It's a quick, easy and fun groundhog craftivity, made out of a brown paper lunch bag.

On one side Phil is ready for spring, on the other side, he saw his shadow and is ready for 6 more weeks of winter. 

Well that's it for today.  I'm feeling the chill of a winter cold coming on, so it's time to make some honey tea and snuggle in, shadow or not.

Wishing you a delightful day.

"The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it." ~Patrick Young