Sunflowers

One of our sweet parents brought us these beautiful sunflowers!

They were such an inspiration for us.....

We organized our art materials around the beautiful shades found in the sunflowers.  Who wouldn't want to paint after seeing these shades of browns, greens, yellows, and oranges????

Through out the days, the children took turns drawing and painting sunflowers......

One of the highlights was when Luke and Jennifer were painting.  After a few minutes of being in the art area, we came to see that they "actually DID paint the sunflowers!"  ;0)

When the children came to stop them and ask them why they did that, they replied, "we wanted to make them beautiful!"  Awwwwww, they are beautiful, don't you think?

Alexandre brought sunflower seeds to school for our class to try!  He stood up during our afternoon meeting with Ashley, and they told the class about sunflower seeds.  We had a wonderful conversation about sunflowers.

We asked, "why are they called sunflowers?"

Kiersten said, "Because they grow in the sun!"

Ashley said, "Because when they are baby sunflower plants, they turn and grow towards the sun."

Good theories, don't you think??

We asked, "which part of the flower do the sunflower seeds come from?"

Ashley said, "The stem", so, we took a knife and split open the stem!

Kyle looked really close.....but he couldn't find any seeds! ;0)

Now where should we look??????

"The big green part in the back!" said some of the children.........but no seeds there either!

"Maybe if you take the petals out you can find them!"

But there were no seeds when we took out the petals!

There were two more places left to look, the leaves and the big, brown center of the flower.  The children picked the brown part, and guess what!!!!!

We found them!!!!

The children all helped pick them out, and then we tasted the sunflower seeds! Yummy!

We all loved them except for 3 of us! 

Some of us loved them so much, we couldn't eat them fast enough! ;0)

Our beautiful sunflowers are hanging up in our room for all to admire, and stay tuned to hear how our sunflower banana cookies come out! MMmmmmm