Groundhog Day
One of the fun things about homeschool (for me personally anyway) is that we get to learn about holidays that we don’t actually celebrate. My family celebrates many holidays but not all the ones that appear on a calendar as a holiday. We do not celebrate some of the traditional ones: New Year’s Eve, Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and a few others.
But with homeschool I want to build a foundation of knowledge and so I get to teach some of these holidays. The kids love any reason to get a little junk food (and for us toast and jelly counts as junk food) and so they loved this day.
As most of my units of study or lessons begin, I look for some literature. Groundhog Weather School by Joan Holub was a book I found at a consignment sale. I like that it had the idea of Groundhog Day as well as some extra fun learning about groundhogs and weather. So I based our day around this book. I learned something new – groundhogs are in the same animal family as prairie dogs. I absolutely had to pull out The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel. I use their books alllllllllllll the time. They are fun authors that used to come visit our elementary school and I fell in love with many of their books. You will see me reference them often since I truly like their style.
We, of course, talked about the weather and seasons during this week because it tied so nicely to a fairly small holiday that did not need more than one day to cover. I’ll post another day about our seasons and weather unit. In Texas we have fairly mild winters most of the time. This week was no exception so we spent the day exploring at a nature refuge. The kids enjoyed seeing their own shadows move along as we walked around. We had done some flashlight shadow play at home, but being outside where all three could make big shadows was way more fun and engaging for them.
And we enjoyed a little snack that I found on Pinterest. I used buttered toast with a bit of jelly and then added banana slices for the snout and ears. Raisins were put for the nose and eyes as well. And for a REAL treat – marshmallow groundhog teeth were the final touch. These tiny humans thought they were in heaven and all three ate the marshmallows first!
It was a fun and simple day. Sometimes you need those days. Groundhog Day was the perfect excuse to just find joy in this journey of homeschooling.