a collision of holidays

so today . . . i realized that this is the holiday week from... well, someplace i would rather not name.

you wouldn't think of february, with it's mere 28 days, as being capable of creating such chaos. but the planets and calendar have aligned in such a way as to make my week a nightmare of projects.

let me just say, i am not a fan of projects. in fact, i hate them. projects, by their very nature, require waaaay more teacher involvement than i think is appropriate. but valentine's day is coming, which means my students have to make cards for their parents. and since i teach in a school where most of the students are chinese, we cannot really ignore chinese new year, which is also this week. AND tomorrow is groundhog day...

ok, well maybe i could ignore groundhog day, but i love groundhog day! i know that it is a totally meaningless holiday. in fact, since no one gets the day off work, we don't give or receive presents, and there are no special foods or songs or decorations, i'm not even sure we can legitimately call it a holiday. and yet, it is one of my favorite days of the year. i mean, how can you not love a day that is all about a guy in a top hat pulling a big, fat furry animal out of a cage, watching him squint into the light, and waiting for the official pronouncement of when spring will arrive?!?!

my kindergarten kids don't quite get this. i explain the whole thing to them, but they just don't get it. they won't accept what i tell them--they keep asking questions. why is the groundhog afraid of his shadow? how can the groundhog tell when the weather will get better? what is a groundhog? how do they pick the official groundhog? who picks the official groundhog? how do they know when he will come out? what if he doesn't come out? what is spring? (well, to be fair, our spring weather isn't all that much different from our winter weather.) there seems to be no end to their questions...

it would be much simpler to just ignore groundhog day. no one would probably even notice--especially since the groundhog and his shadow are pretty much irrelevant if you live in southern california--but it is a part of our culture. so whether it makes any sense or not, i feel compelled to talk about it every year. and do a project, because i have this cute little pop-up groundhog they can make...

which would be fine, if chinese new year didn't happen to fall during the same week as groundhog day. because i also have a couple of cool projects for chinese new year that i want to do. and then valentine's day is just around the corner. AND we still have our normal school work to complete, which is just a lot to get done.

so the result of this is, today we talked about groundhog day and did a quick activity, and also did the first part of our chinese new year project. tomorrow we will make the groundhog project, finish up the chinese new year one, and start on the parent valentines. by the end of the week, i figure they will be totally confused--is it going to be spring because the chinese dragon saw his shadow? is the groundhog the one who gives them the red envelope with money in it? do the hearts mean the new year is here or that it is spring? and why do we call that shape a heart when our heart isn't shaped like that at all?

life is so much simpler when chinese new year comes in january...