Tots and Me... Growing Up Together: It's Groundhog's Day: Here's a Fun Craft to Do With Your Children {Groundhog's Day Circle Flip Craft}

Happy Groundhog's Day

No, we don't usually do a whole lot for Groundhog's Day. And, I'm not very happy with him right now because he saw his shadow, which means there are 6 more weeks of winter. Of course, there are 6 more weeks of winter left anyway, but we'll blame the groundhog, right? It's always seemed like a silly tradition to me, but I used to always love making groundhog cupcakes for my older children to take into school. I haven't made those in years, and we usually don't do anything here at home. But I thought it would be fun to do a groundhog's day craft at co-op yesterday with the preschoolers. I decided to share the craft today because it won't really be relevant come next week's Littles Learning Link Up, plus next week will be my Valentine's Day Literature and Craft Round Up.

I found this great idea over at Almost Unschoolers. We called it a Groundhog's Day Circle Flip Craft.

Now, when I was reading the directions over on the Almost Unschoolers blog, I ended up having to do the craft 3 times because I kept making mistakes. I was hoping to explain how I ended up doing the craft with the children, so it can be a bit easier to understand. Though, I admit others may not have the comprehension problems I did.

The craft was supposed to have 2 blue construction paper circles and one green construction paper circle cut in half. I thought by having two different color blues we could have one that was darker for the cloudy day and one light blue for the sunny day. However, when I got it put together I realized, we don't even see the other blue color. So, technically, the one circle COULD be any color. I think by having the two blues, it helped me to realize how the craft went together. So, I would recommend 1 light blue and 1 dark blue.

You will also need a groundhog template. I usually google "_________ coloring page" to find images to use. But this time I used the same groundhog that was recommended over at Almost Unschoolers, because I agreed with her that it is just so cute. It can be found and downloaded at All Kids Network.

Additionally, I cut flower shapes out of different color construction paper, a sun out of yellow construction paper, and gave the children cotton balls to use for snow and clouds. We also used a brown and a yellow crayon and a glue stick. Older children could draw flowers on their craft if they so choose. I was trying to make sure all the children in our group could make this craft as independently as possible.

The first step is to glue a green half-circle onto the bottom of each of the blue circles.

Then you cover the blue section of one of the circles with glue. You will want to put glue on the color you do not want to see in your finished project. Then you put the other circle directly over the other circle, pushing down on the top half to glue it down.

You should be able to lift the bottom half of the top circle up, so you can make a picture on both the top and bottom "pages."

Each child colors two groundhogs brown and cuts them out. One is glued in the middle of the first "page." The children then glue a sun into the sky and add a shadow and cotton ball snow on the ground. We used the yellow crayon to draw on sun's rays.