Groundhogs and Weather

Every Tuesday after school I do a program called Try-It Tuesday. I have various things that I do--mostly crafts or science experiments.  On Groundhog Day, I decided we should concentrate on the topic at hand.

I started by reading Groundhog Weather School by Joan Holub. My program is aimed at grades 2-5, and I mostly get second graders, so this went over pretty well.

Next, we made homemade barometers similar to the one at this link. https://www.sercc.com/education_files/barometer.pdf

This went okay. The kids didn't really understand what I was doing, and they were more interested in squabbling with each other ("Girls rule!" "No, boys rule!")

After this, we played a game with beanbags that I called "Groundhog Toss" which got some of the energy out. I put a basket on the floor at various distances and they had to get as many bean bags in as they could. We played this for about 15 minutes, then we switched to groundhog Bingo for fifteen minutes.

I don't know that I would repeat this program again. I've had other programs with this same group of kids that held their interest more.