Sunflowers (book and craft activities)

Last fall, the boys and I read a book about sunflowers called Sunflower House by Eve Bunting.  They made some cute sunflower crafts to go along with the book.  But, what they really wanted to do was plant some sunflower seeds of their own. 

 This spring, we did just that.

The hardest part was, of course, the waiting.

They started growing, and growing and growing.

The boys are so proud of their sunflowers and can't wait to harvest the seeds and plant even more next year.

We had a lot of rain recently and it knocked down some of the flowers...no problem,  I just cut them and brought them inside to enjoy.

We read a few books about sunflowers and how they grow from seeds and how seeds are harvested.

The Sunflower Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs

How Does It Grow? From Seed to Sunflower by Ian Smith

We also worked on a sunflower craft

We took some paper and some yellow, green and brown paint and went to work.

I painted his hand yellow and Nathan made handprints to form a sunflower.

Then Nathan painted a stem, some leaves and grass.

Next, Nathan dipped his fingers into the brown paint and made "seeds"

Cute, huh?

And for a super sweet treat, we made some of these too....

Sunflower Cupcakes

(More on these later...)

I was really glad that they could experience firsthand, the process of seeds, watering and tending to a garden.  And that they enjoyed it as much as they did.  Of course, playing in the sprinkler as they watered the flowers, probably had something to do with how much they loved it.