Groundhog Paper Bag Puppet

This post is going up a little late for the day, but this morning I felt so bad for the poor groundhog. Between the Superbowl and the large snow storm hitting the East Coast, he barely got a mention on the morning news.

And of course we hate to let a holiday pass us by, so why not honor the groundhog on this snowy Groundhog Day at home?

We've enjoyed making paper bag animal puppets before, they're quick and easy to assemble and take very little prep time. (Check out our dragon and owl puppets here.)

Before creating our puppet we read a book we recently took out of the library: Gretchen Groundhog It's Your Day by Abby Levine. We also watched a couple of quick news clips of today's groundhog news online. 

Next we gathered our materials: paper lunch bags, construction paper, large googly eyes, glue stick, scissors, and large popsicle sticks. 

We decided on the parts we wanted to include: eyes, ears, teeth, and a nose. Big Brother decided our groundhogs should look a little fancier (like the guys with the black hats in the videos) and wanted them to have bow ties. 

Big Brother cut out a few of the pieces, and then had me do the rest. 

Next we glued the pieces onto the bag. The ears went on the top, the nose in the middle, and the eyes between those two pieces. The teeth we glued to the bottom edge of the fold, so they would stick out when we used the puppet. The bow tie went in the middle. 

When our groundhogs were done we decided to make a sun, so the groundhog could decide if he saw his shadow or not. We cut a circle out of yellow construction paper and triangles out of orange paper. We glued the triangles onto the paper and taped it to a large popsicle stick.

Now we had a couple of groundhogs and a sun, and we were ready for a puppet show!

Big Brother put one on for us in the playroom. 

He eagerly announced that there would only be ten more days of winter. 

With several fresh inches of snow outside, and more still falling, that's a little hard to believe. 

I think we'll have to go with the actual groundhog, who promised six more weeks of winter. 

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