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BROWN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL KINDERGARTEN students Ali Hamed, left, and Austin Smith snuggle under blankets in their pajamas as they listen to teacher Jeff Horwitz read about how certain animals spend the winter. The two classes recently did some hibernation of their own, dressing in their bedclothes, bringing a favorite stuffed animal and turning their classroom doorways into cave entrances. Student Tommy Truong is in the background.

The brown bear prints began at the school’s front door and led the way down the hall to two caves, both decorated with signs that read, “Shhhh. We’re hibernating.”

Winter truly arrived at Brown Elementary School recently as the school’s kindergarten students capped their study of animal life-cycles with their own hibernation time. The students dressed in pajamas and slippers and their favorite teddy bear or other stuffed animal accompanied them to school.

“We have been working on our animals in winter unit and we decided to hibernate today,” teacher Debbie Rhyne said.

Inside both rooms, the only light came through the windows. Tables became tents as blankets and quilts covered them and provided a place for the children to hide, giggle and play games. In Rhyne’s class, the students took turns making treats for the non-migratory birds, while in the other kindergarten room, Jeff Horwitz sat in a rocking chair in a corner of the room, reading hibernation stories such as “The Long Winter” and “Animals in Winter.”

To get started on feeding the birds for the rest of the winter, Rhyne called students in pairs to a table near the windows where two dishes of peanut butter, a container of pine cones and a bowl of birdseed set. She told the students to roll up their sleeves, then she picked up a pine cone, rolled it in peanut butter then rolled it in the birdseed, so the bird food stuck to the pine cone. Then it was the students’ turn. Many of them seemed hesitant about touching the pine cones or rolling them in the peanut butter and birdseed.

After extricating the pine cones from the seed, the students placed them in plastic bags to take home.

As the other students in Horwitz’s class lay on the carpet in front of his rocking chair, he lent the characters different voices and accents, which made the students laugh.

Some of the boys and girls found hibernating too motionless for their liking.

“Stop moving,” Horwitz had to remind some of his class. “You can’t hibernate if you’re moving all the time.”

After Rhyne’s class finished their pine cones and Horwitz finished the stories, the classes swapped rooms so everyone had a chance to make a pine cone and listen to how animals survive the winter.

(story and photo courtesy of Hazelwood School District)

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