Groundhog Day: Books and Activities for the Classroom

Will there be six more weeks of winter, or is spring on its way? Watching Punxatawny Phil make his prediction has always been one of my favorite Groundhog Day classroom traditions. If we’re in school on February 2nd, you can bet my classroom will have a few engaging lessons and student-centered activities to commemorate the day.

I also have several Groundhog Day books that I like to feature in my classroom library from the latter part of January through early February. I thought I’d take some time to highlight a few of my favorite Groundhog Day books and give you a peek at my Groundhog Day unit on Teachers Pay Teachers!

GROUNDHOG DAY BOOKS

You can see by the state of my Groundhog Day books that these titles have been well-loved. I’ve used most of these titles with second, third, and fourth graders. The links I’m sharing below are affiliate links, which means that I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

These are my Groundhog Day staples. I read them every year, and my kids love them. Gail Gibbons is one of my favorite authors, and I love the way she writes for younger audiences. I have an author basket for her books in my classroom library, so Groundhog Day lives there all year long.

Substitute Groundhog is a fun fiction read-aloud that details what happens when Groundhog gets sick! My kids love making predictions about which forest friend will be able to do the job.

Groundhog Gets a Say and Groundhog Weather School are both informative narratives that worked really well in my 4th-grade and 5th-grade classrooms. Big kids love picture books too, and these complemented the close reading piece we worked on in class very nicely. 

I use Gail Gibbons’ book in my mini-lessons that week and give the students access to all three informational texts as they worked on the close reading passage activities. Several of my students enjoyed completing their Top 5 activity with a new fact from one of the informational books. 

“Top 5” is one of my favorite synthesizing activities. It’s a simple way for me to gather information from my students, and there are very few “wrong” answers. As long as students can give me 5 significant details about a given topic, they’ve done exactly what I’ve asked! I love seeing which facts are most important (#1) for them. 

Gretchen Groundhog, It’s Your Day! is a title that is newer to me. I LOVE reading this story with classes when I have a student who is painfully shy. Their eyes always widen and they give me the look that says, “SHE’S JUST LIKE ME!” All the heart eyes. Gretchen’s uncle is too old to go out for Groundhog Day, so it’s her turn to make the announcement. She’s terribly shy and doesn’t think she’ll be able to do it. 

Any of the titles mentioned in this post, or any groundhog titles you may have, will work well with the reading printables I have in my Groundhog Day unit. You can actually use several of the pages any time of year! 

I hope you’ve gotten some great ideas and titles to take back to your classroom for Groundhog Day. If you have any titles I might have missed, let me know in the comments below. I’m always on the hunt for a good book. Make sure you pin this post so you can find it anytime you need it!