Happy Groundhog’s Day!

(My husband went to great lengths to find me a stainless steel fridge that lets magnets stick to it… I was SO HAPPY!)

Groundhog’s Day Paper Craft—there is a prediction option and a writing paper option.

Groundhog’s Day is celebrated in Canada and the United States on February 2nd each year. We watch our favourite groundhog on this day. If it is cloudy, he will come out of his burrow and, tradition says, spring will start soon. If it is sunny, he will see his shadow and scoot back into his burrow for six more weeks of winter sleep.

Before coming to the “new world”, Europeans used a hedgehog for much the same purpose. When they arrived in the Americas they discovered that there are no hedgehogs but that groundhogs hibernate over winter in burrows in much the same way. So the groundhog was nominated the first American weatherman!

Groundhog at Heckrodt Wetland Reserve.
(CC BY–ND 2.0)

Groundhog’s Day is a great time to introduce children to the idea of “predictions”. A prediction is a guess about the future. There are all sorts of ways to make a prediction! To predict what the future weather is going to be, you can use:

• fun, little games like watching what a groundhog does,
• science, like meteorology,
• your own knowledge about the past (what happened last year),
• random chance, like flipping a coin

This year, I put together some simple cut and paste paper craft templates for Groundhog’s Day that incorporates the idea of predictions. Or, if you’d prefer, you can use the blank writing paper instead of the predictions to write your own story, report or poem.

Kids of most ages can participate in coloring the pieces and beginning scissor skills users will find shapes like the head easy to cut out.

Cut and paste craft templates.

You can also combine this craft with the KidZone graphing activities to add a bit of challenge for older kids!

Groundhog’s Day graphing worksheets.