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I recognize that it’s a bit beyond Ground Hog Day but you know… life gets busy eh? I figure it’s better late than never right?
Anyways, for groundhog day we watched the movie GroundHog Day. This movie is from 1993, and stars comedian Bill Murray. It also stared the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania.
As part of the day’s focus I gave the lad a challenge. Told him he needed to use up some of our stale marshmallows and ANYTHING ELSE he wanted to use. His goal.. make a groundhog den. However he defined that was entirely up to him. I know I had a thought in mind of what he would come up with …but he admittedly went in a completely different direction than I thought he would.
We also looked up the various groundhogs that are named around Canada and the USA.
In Canada we have the following groundhogs:
Wiarton Willie… Wiarton, Ontario
OilSprings Ollie…near Sarnia, Ontario
Shubenacadie Sam…Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia
Balzac Billy… Balzac, Alberta
Gaspésie Fred… from Quebec
This year they all had different predictions, which makes sense given their geographical distance from each other.
Anyways, on to my son’s definition of my instructions.
He took the marshmallows and his spray bottle that we have for the new cat to help her learn some manners. Grabbed a plate from the kitchen and started to spray the marshmallows so he could stick them together and form a basic shape.
“It’s winter mom, we won’t be able to see the den”.
He then stuck that in the freezer.
Every time it froze solid he’d bring it out and add more marshmallows until he had a solid mound of marshmallows with an opening so Wiarton Willie could come out and look for his shadow.
I have to admit I never got a final picture of the project. Apparently there was a collusion between Dad and boy and well…. “Mom, It was a mess”. In the picture above this was step two, the opening is on the side facing away. It was in and out of the freezer three times with some marshmallows added in different places in each stage. It would melt and fall apart quickly.
The end result “this was fun to do mom!”
If I had been inclined to I could have given him a unit study or worksheets to fill out, but meh…when he did this we were still recovering from the effects of a VERY nasty flu that hit our household. Therefore this was just enough knowledge and activity for the day for him.
If you are so inclined to do a unit study on GroundHog Day, these are some that I found that are free:
Life of a homeschool mom.
Meet Penny.
Homeschool Share.
DIY Homeschooler.
