Of course, Phil is not the only groundhog in the country. We read that not only are all groundhogs not named Phil, but many are not even called groundhogs. Sometimes they are called woodchucks, marmots, or whistle pigs. Actually, we already knew that. In fact, in our corner of Montana we have yellow-bellied marmots.
Our local marmot of note, chose not to come out of his burrow for the news cameras today though, much like the groundhog in Maurice Sendak's Little Bear, The Search for Spring.
With no marmot to be seen, we had to come up with a stand-in, like the children in Mrs. Connor's class in Margaret McNamara's Groundhog Day. They used the class hamster.
We used a crocheted groundhog, after finding the pattern through Google images, while looking at different groundhogs from across the country.
Our groundhog did not see his shadow.
We were a little disappointed, as it seems like we've hardly had any winter at all this year. We were hoping for six more weeks. So, we decided to take matters into our own hands, with a batch of chocolate sugar cookie dough, dyed black (click here, for the recipe), and the groundhog template from All Kids Network (the same one we used for our groundhog craft, just resized for cookies).
Looking at the plate full of shadowy cookies, I'm pretty sure I could see fear in our groundhog's eyes. Maybe we'll have a few more weeks of winter, after all.
It's great to be a homeschooler.
3 comments:
It was 80 degrees here on February 1. I was regretting wearing my long sleeved shirt.
Love that groundhog.
Love those cute cookies!!
Awesome. It looks like winter decided to skip all of us this year.
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