Groundhog Project: Community Description

Hello Groundhog Friends!

Here is a little bit about our corner of Nevada.  We are the biggest town for at least 300 miles in any direction.  We are right on I-80 so it is a straight shot to SLC (a 4 hour drive, where most go for major medical stuff), and Reno (a 5 hour drive, where our high school teams go to play sports)  North is Boise and Twin Falls, Idaho (4 hours and 2 1/2 hours...yay!).  All can be considered "day trips", over and back.  Vegas is a little farther...7-8 hours.  Sometimes I think that people don't realize how out in the middle of nowhere we are.

We are in the high desert so we get hot and dry in the summer and snow and cold in the winter.  It is known as basin and range, so you go up and over one mountain range and into a wide, dry valley, then up over another mountain range and into another valley.  All of the streams from the mountains flow into rivers that end up sinking into salt flat deserts on both sides of the basin.  The mountains around us are very beautiful!

Needless to say this is good cattle country and we have a lot of cattle ranches (big and small).  We also host the National Cowboy Poetry gathering each January.  That is where amateur and professional poets, singers, and songwriters gather to share.  FUN!!!!

Elko is also mining country.  Gold mining.  Most of our families work in something that is connected to mining. 

Elko was founded in 1868 by the Central Pacific Railroad when they were building the transcontinental railroad line.  Before then is was just a wide spot on the California Trail.  We have a great trail center now, where we can go to learn more about that part of our history.

Nevada school districts cover the county...so our school district is huge in land, small in population. We have several one and two room schoolhouses and go from the Utah border, to the Idaho border, to just 30 miles past Elko to the west and south (that would be a total of 17,182 square miles....and yes you read that right...17 thousand).   Elko's population is just around 20,000.  My school is K-4.  For some reason we have lots of young families moving in and we have 4 Kindergartens.  My class has 26 students, 10 boys and 16 girls.

Our little groundhog is Sarah.  I know she looks like a hedgehog, but remember they are related.  During a warm spell we got to out and check our own shadow.  I blogged about it here...but, winter came back and it snowed!!  Out my window today it looks like this.

I know our groundhog said 6 more weeks of winter...but I am really hoping he is wrong.  This winter has been extra cold and I am ready for this to melt and spring to come.

Groundhog Shadows

Is it sunny where you are?  After weeks and weeks of cold...bone-chilling...brrrrr...cold, and dark dismal days, Groundhog Day beamed beautiful sunny skies, beautiful Nevada blue.  That darn groundhog saw his shadow and now we will have 6 more weeks of winter.  Here is our little Groundhog checking out the weather Saturday.

Today we voted on a name for our groundhog.  Sarah won (I have 10 boy to 16 girl ratio in my class).  Oh you should have seen some of the tears and tantrums from a few of the boys.  Lessons in democracy can be so tough.  We now get to report the name and our groundhog's prediction to Project Groundhog and begin keeping track of the weather. 

To celebrate (luckily) we traced and watched our shadows all day.  We started out first thing in the morning tracing the shadows of two students.

Then we traced again at morning recess.

Then after lunch.

And finally at our last recess.  Everyone was sure our shadow would continue to shrink....SURPRISE!!  I love how excited they get when they discover something new.

Actually not true...just for good measure we traced one more time as we were walking out at the end of the day.  Oops...didn't have my camera that time.  Too bad because we got to see how really tall it got, everyone was amazed.  That will have to be a ChitChat topic tomorrow.

Loving literature and poetry I had to share My Shadow by Robert Lewis Stevenson.  After watching the second tracing they got the lines about shooting up like an India rubber ball and not growing like proper children.  I think we may try drawing shadows tomorrow.  Today we made cute little paper plate "stages" and groundhog puppets complete with shadows, sang with Harry Kindergarten, and decided that the groundhog was wrong.  Spring really must be coming soon.

Project Groundhog

This is just a quick note....an email came to my inbox yesterday.  It said that Project Groundhog registration opens tomorrow!

Have you ever participated in Project Groundhog before?  You should go check it out here!  It is simple, it is fun, and it includes things you might already be doing.

You create a class groundhog, name him, and then check out his prediction on February 2nd.  You share that information online with your team.  Everything is easy to do.  Then you keep track of the weather for six weeks to help you decide if your groundhog was correct.  Each week you post your weather and connect with the other schools on your team.  Easy Peasy.

I always look forward to this....lots of opportunities for graphing (we always ask the whole school if the groundhog is going to be right and post that graph on the wall outside our classroom), science lessons on shadows (we track our shadow all day long one day during the six weeks), lessons on groundhogs.  I teach my kinders how to read a thermometer.  We collect data.  We write emails to our team.  Of course there is always a little craftivity that goes on.  I think we may do this from Just Wild About Teaching.  She has a whole unit of things to do.

I may also do this simple paper plate shadow and pop-up puppet.  I saw it here....but A Mommy's Adventures didn't mention exactly where she got it, except to say her daughter's pre-school teacher did it.

Michelle at Teach 123 has a nice list of books you could read and she has created a great resource too.  Check her out here.

Random facts...Did you know that February 2 is exactly halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox?  That's how (or why) Candlemas Day started.  Farmers needed to check their hay supplies to see if they would have enough to last the rest of the winter (hopefully spring would come early?).  People would go have their candles blessed to last them until spring as well. Lots of other good random things like if you found the little baby in your Kings Cake on Epiphany you are supposed to bring it to a Candlemas gathering. But I keep thinking it only gets better from here....no matter what, the days are getting longer, we are half done, and spring is on its way.

Have some fun with the groundhog and join me (we may even get on the same team)!