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Frosty Freeze


Today we were up and outdoors on a frosty, frozen wintery day in Harrington! Guess what else came out in yesterday’s cold, snowy, wintery day? Wiarton Willie, the famous groundhog! Today we explored the world of groundhogs or you could also call them woodchucks. Over the last couple of weeks we have been learning that sometimes there are different words which are used to talk about the same thing.


Groundhogs live in underground burrows. We pretended to be groundhogs as we ran through our large outdoor burrow. Dragonfly made the burrow by walking through the snow on snowshoes so that there were paths (tunnels) and circles (rooms) in the snow all around the Harrington Hall. Ask your child to name three types of rooms found in a groundhog’s burrow.


A groundhog hibernates. Does your child remember what this word means? This furry animal is known for predicting the weather. This year Wiarton Willie predicts it will be an early spring because he did not see his shadow.

In our outdoor burrow, we also played a game of tag with a Burrowing Owl and a Red Fox. These animals are predators. Can your child explain what a predator is?


To balance all the fun outside, we were taking frequent breaks inside Harrington Hall. Our science experiment on insulation was started inside by making jello, but it was just a coloured, peachy smelling liquid. In order to make jello it needs to be chilled. With our jello (liquid) in small containers we went outside to see if we could make it into a solid by setting it somewhere cold, or could we find a warm enough spot to keep it as a liquid. Ask your child if they found a spot that was warm enough or insulated enough to keep the jello as a liquid? Can they make the connection between more layers of clothes adding insulation which means we will feel warmer?


Of course we had to have some time to frolic in this beautiful snow.


Inside, we used some loose parts to make our own borrows and then we used our journals to make a sketch of what they looked like with all of the different rooms.



Indoor games kept us active, happy and challenged.

Mrs. Eastman in the library had set up an indoor scavenger hunt. Everyone was looking for cutouts of little groundhogs and had to use their keen eyes to scan all the books and shelves of the library. The skills of looking and observing also helps us when we walk the trails outside. Mrs. Eastman read us a book called “The Secret of the First One Up” which was also about groundhogs. Thank you for planning activities that are so much fun for our group Mrs. Eastman.

Thanks also to Tamarack and Raccoon all the help today and for making us some hot chocolate to enjoy after our visit to Mystery Forest. We never seem to get a picture of BIG Raccoon because he is always the one behind the camera.




Happy trails until next week Forest Friends:)



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