Project Groundhog {Tried it Tuesday}

Good morning all!  We are starting late today due to some extra chilly temperatures, so I thought I'd get my post done for Holly's weekly Tried It Tuesday link up over at Fourth Grade Flipper before I head out to school.  Have you tried something new lately that you want to share?  If so, be sure to head on over and link up.  I come away each week with at least one new idea I want to try out in my room.
Last week my students and I joined Project Groundhog 2014, an online project run by first grade teacher Bill Jameson.  This annual project has students predicting, researching, gathering and graphing data based on the weather folklore of whether or not the groundhog can predict the comping of Spring. (I for one hope old Phil is wrong and Winter will soon give up its hold...not sure I can take 6 more weeks of this.)  For the project, Bill teams up different classrooms around the USA and Canada.  There are 7 schools on our team this year. We are participating with schools from New Mexico, Canada, Texas, Vermont, and Alaska.  My students will track the temperature and sky conditions each day from February 3 to March 21.  We are graphing the daily temperature, then finding the average at the end of the week along with the range for the week.  On Monday each classroom inputs their average temperature for the week so we are able to graph the averages of our team to see how the locations compare.  This week our team had temperatures ranging from -18°C to 4°C (We had the second lowest temp for the week with -13°C/ 9°F!) One of the hardest parts for us is the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius.  There's a handy dandy web tool that does it, but the mindset isn't there.
In addition to monitoring the temperature and sky conditions each week, classes have a challenge to complete as well.  Last week we had to put together a short community description to share with the rest of the team.  It is really interesting find out more about some far off places.  We were certainly jealous of the warm temperatures reported in New Mexico and Texas but thankful we weren't in Canada!
While it is too late for you to join up with Project Groundhog this year, you may want to put it on your calendar so you can join in next year.  It is a fun easy to do project that I know your students will enjoy.  Be sure to head over to Fourth Grade Flipper to see what others have tried.  Have a great week!