Winter Detectives - Groundhog Pays Visit to Schools

Rockbridge preschoolers are learning about hibernation first-hand from a drowsy groundhog who wakes up briefly from his long winter’s nap to visit them.

Woodchuck Chuck and his sidekick, Chatter the Squirrel, are hand puppets animated by Boxerwood naturalists as part of Boxerwood’s Winter Detectives outreach program. They’re trying to make the rounds – weather permitting- to 16 preschool classrooms in the Rockbridge area.

Recently Chuck and Chatter (a.k.a. Hannah Klein and Jessica Sullivan) visited children at Noah’s Ark preschool and in Head Start classes at Enderly Heights Elementary. They were scheduled to be in Connie Huffman’s preschool classroom at Fairfield elementary on Groundhog Day this past Tuesday, but, appropriately, that turned out to be yet another snow day.

Chuck explains to the children how he fattens up in fall and demonstrates how his heartbeat and breathing slow “way, way, way down” in late autumn. In this way, he burns up very little energy and is able to sleep through most of the winter, when food is scarce.

The Fairfield children were scheduled to learn from Chuck that groundhogs wake up in the middle of their long winter’s nap not to look for their shadows and predict the weather, but to grab a quick snack. After two months in hibernation and two more to go, a groundhog can get pretty hungry!

Winter Detectives is sponsored by the Dale Waller in Early Childhood in Nature Program at Boxerwood. Although their schedule is busy, Chuck and Chatter are willing to add a few more classes to their tour.

For more information about Winter Detectives and Boxerwood’s other Early Education programs, contact Bonnie Bernstein at 463-2697 or bonnie@boxerwood.org.

Caption for photo above: "Children in Danelle Moran and Jdi Staton's Head Start class at Enderly Heights Elementary are excited when Woodchuck Chuck comes out of his burrow to meet them."

edited from The Weekender, Lexington, VA February 6, 2010