Exploring Sunflowers

Sunflowers are such a fun, vibrant flower to explore as we begin to notice the seasons changing and autumn arrive. We explored a wonderful text called "Lilla's Sunflowers" last week that discusses how many sunflowers are planted all over the country when a young girl shares seeds with her military father. This text is beautifully written with easy to understand narrative and captivating illustrations.

 

In order to help our children make connections to the book, we offered real sunflowers and dried sunflowers at a table along with the book and tools like tweezers, sorting trays and magnifying glasses.

The children were encouraged to visit the centre and use the tools to examine the sunflowers up close and then pick out the seeds. This activity required detailed fine motor work and helped strengthen children's patience as well as their pincher grasp.

The next day we offered the large dried sunflowers as tools for making prints. The children were interested in how the stems acted as handles and kept their hands clean during the activity.

We pressed the sunflowers into paint and made a beautiful print!
 

What's Inside?

Last week the children were very interested in seeing what they had each brought for snack. There were some great conversations happening at the snack centre about what the food looked like, smelled like, and tasted like.

 

Today I brought in some different kinds of squash. I wanted to extend the children's interests and thought this would be an engaging way to do so.

 

First we passed the different squash around the carpet. The children were encouraged to use many senses to explore; what did the squash feel like (exploring textures), how heavy was it (exploring measurement), how did it look (noting similarities and differences). This was also a good activity to reinforce turn taking.

During playtime the children were invited to explore the inside of the squash. This lead to many interesting math discussions - equality (2 halves of a squash are the same as 1 whole), estimation and counting (how many seeds are inside), measurement (which squash is biggest? which has the biggest seeds?) and shape (some squash are round and some are not). The children also practiced their fine motor skills as they used the tweezers to pick the seeds out. This took a lot of patience and perseverance because the seeds were slippery and stuck in the squash guts!

 

 

Families we are hoping to cook some squash for the children to taste. If you have any you are able to donate to our room, we would appreciate it! Also, if you are interested in volunteering to help with this activity, please let us know! Thank you!

Our Garden

Our children were so excited to plant their own seeds today. Thank you to those families who sent in donations. 

Children took total responsibility for this experience today - filling their pots with dirt, choosing their own seeds, planting the seeds, writing the name of their seeds on a stick and watering the seeds. 

We included art and literacy in our planting area to help showcase what we planted and share our ideas with others. 

Tasting something new

The children have noticed that fruits and vegetables have seeds inside. Miss J brought in pomegranate seeds to taste at circle today. We described how they looked and tasted. Children gave them a thumbs up or thumbs down. 

Seedlings

Many children will be bringing home seedlings that they planted at school. These can be planted directly in soil due to a compostable wrapping around the seed. The children planted peas, carrots, lettuce, sunflowers, or beans.

Look Close!

The seeds we planted on Friday have started to sprout!

Planting Seeds

We have been reading many stories about seeds and how plants grow. To help children experience the joy of gardening we set up a planting station in the classroom today. 

There were five choices of vegetables to choose from - beans, cucumbers, peas, carrots, and tomatoes. 

The children were responsible for filling their cup with soil, choosing what type of seed they wanted to plant, planting it, and giving it some water. 

We hope to see some sprouts growing when we return from after the Easter weekend!