Happy Groundhog Day

I expected to find some fun recipes online for making treats for kids on Groundhog Day. I made the mistake of searching for "groundhog recipes". Let me just say that the word "day" is really important in this search. Otherwise, you will find recipes that describe how to skin your groundhog before cooking. Ewww!

I didn't find anything inspiring so I decided to just wing it. I was feeling lazy and didn't want to make cupcakes again this year. But pre-made cupcakes sounded good to me. We went to the grocery and I asked Nicholas to find some Ding Dongs. He has only had Ding Dong cupcakes one time that I know of so I knew he wouldn't pick it out by just recognizing the packaging. He actually had to read the words on the box in order to find them. And he did!



Then I let Nicholas help me pick out a few other things that we might use to make our Ding Dongs look like a groundhog. We didn't have a specific plan so we bought a little more than we ended up using. We got home and set out all of our supplies to try to brainstorm what would work best. At least we had plenty of fun snacking while we were creating.



Here's what we came up with...



We used Ding Dongs, Keebler mini fudge grasshopper cookies and pink icing for ears, mini M&Ms and chocolate icing for eyes, a chocolate chip for a nose, and marshmallow pieces for teeth. Once we made our first groundhog, we had to make a few more friends for him so he didn't get lonely. Nicholas did a great job with his creations.





We also played with a groundhog puppet that he made at school today. He colored a picture of a groundhog and a styrofoam cup, attached the groundhog to a pencil, and put the end of the pencil through a hole in the bottom of the cup. His cute little groundhog could pop his head out of his hole and see his shadow on the ground. We talked about how the shadows changed as he changed the angle to the sun.



Happy Groundhog Day!