sunflowers: flower study part 2

Elise and I have spent the past few weeks doing a "flower study."  Read part 1 here!

I've decided to try dedicating a little space in our classroom

each month to a special song or poem.

(Yes!  Elise has her own classroom now - I'll share more soon!)

From the classroom window, we are able to see dozens of sunflowers

and watch goldfinches and chickadees feasting on their seeds.

A sunflower song seemed like the perfect first choice...

Sunflower by Sanford Jones

Sunflower, sunflower yellow and round.

You are the prettiest flower I've found.

Tall, straight, full of grace...

I love the light in your bright yellow face!

This song can also be played on the Montessori bells.  

Here's a cute little YouTube video if you want to hear the tune!

We are using this homemade sunflower puzzle

to learn the names of the parts of the sunflower plant:

roots, stem, leaves, and flower.

(An older child may enjoy labeling the parts or matching 3 part cards like these.)

The puzzle pieces all button together,

which is great because Elise is in a sensitive period for buttoning!

One morning, after buttoning the petals to the seed part of the flower,

we decided to go investigate some real sunflower seeds...

See?  We've even got sunflowers growing out of the sidewalk!

We watched bees drinking nectar and gathering pollen...

And observed that some of the flowers were missing seeds

- could it be the goldfinches?!

We chose a few flowers that were done blooming to cut and bring inside.

We spent the afternoon pretending to be birds,

using tweezers to pull out seeds!

This was always a popular lesson in my classroom 

- check it out here -

and it has been so much fun sharing it with Elise,

who eats all the seeds on the spot, of course!