Shadow Play: Groundhog's Day Science Activity

We love a good science activity around here, especially those super simple ones. In honor of Groundhog’s Day, we are celebrating with some shadow play! This activity is fun because it is simple but it can span a wide range of ages.

Groundhog Craft: paper plate mound colored brown and green, construction paper groundhog head popping out of the paper plate

Groundhog’s Day

For those of you who are not familiar, Groundhog’s Day is the day Punxsutawney Phil predicts the remainder of the winter months. Punxsutawney Phil lives in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and each February 2nd, he breaks from his hibernation to look for his shadow. If Phil sees his shadow there will be six more weeks of winter. If he does not see his shadow, he predicts an early spring.

Each year, my children argue that if he sees his shadow it should be an indication that the sun is shining which to them means spring and summer is coming. Instead, the tradition stems from a Christian background in which Germans celebrated Candlemas. The belief was that if the sun was shining on Candlemas, then the hedgehog would see its shadow and there would be snow until May. My personal theory is that his own shadow scares him back into his burrow.

Shadow Play

Shadow play is something that is such a fun concept for kids. The ability to create shadows and that you create shadows can be so awe striking to kids. We started out simply by just seeing whether or not the groundhog could see his own shadow. This concept started out harder than I anticipated but then I realized that my children could see the shadow each time but were not paying attention to where the groundhog’s eyes were facing. Once they thought about this, they quickly grabbed hold.

After some time doing shadow play and figuring out if it would be winter or spring soon, we moved on to other shadows. We started by trying to make some shapes, animals, and even trying to see what our favorite stuffed animal shadows looked like. This is my favorite part of play. One activity leads to another and before you know it they are experimenting all on their own!