From the Ground Up

Groundhogs day is just around the corner. . .literally it is in one day (February 2nd). I wasn't planning on doing a groundhogs day post, but I happened to make a comment to a fellow worker the other day about Groundhogs day only being so-and-so many days away, and his reply was, "Who cares about Groundhogs day, and what is it even about?" Well, if anyone knows about me and holidays, and I know there are people out there who have gotten caught in my holiday excitement, they know I love all holidays. I love those oddball days of the years that everyone forgets about. For example in high school I celebrated "Name Day", a Czech holiday. In Czech Republic there are designated days for each name, and they celebrate it. So I celebrated my friends name in high school. I baked her a cake for "Denisa Day". Holidays are just too much fun, and why would you choose to spend your day thinking it's not a holiday when it can be a holiday? Anyways I am getting off track. So, I am not going to go in long detail about what groundhogs day is about, you can find all that information on the internet somewhere.

But sure enough Cameron and I did take some time today to do a groundhog activity, and to make a groundhog themed treat. The activity is one I did last year during my story time at Barnes and Noble. The kids loved it then so I thought why not do it again.

 "Pop-Up Ground Hog"

Supplies:

- paper

- glue

- pipe cleaners

- styrofoam cup

- markers

- popsicle stick

- crayons

- googlie eyes

- scissors

1. Poke a hole in the bottom of the styrofoam cup, and then let the child color the cup as desired. Use crayons for the cup, because marker takes a while to dry on the cup, and can quickly get everywhere.

These are the shapes needed to make the actual groundhog.

2. Cut the paper into the shape of the ground hog. Then glue them together, and let the child help place things to together. Draw the face on the ground hog, and then glue on the googlie eyes. These take a little longer to dry you will need to hold them in place for a minute. Then glue the pipe cleaners onto the face.

Cameron's groundhog of course is pink!

She was having the groundhogs talk to each other it was really cute!

3.  And lastly glue the popsicle stick onto the ground hog and push through the bottom of the cup.

"Groundhog Cupcakes"

You can use any kind of cupcake for this, earthy colors would probably look the best. And I just used candies to make the groundhog. Simple enough!

 Have a Happy Ground Hogs day and let us hope that he does not see his shadow this year. . .that means that spring will have sprung early. Not that this hasn't already happened!

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