The Sunflower House

Kansas's 151st birthday is on Sunday January 29, 2012. Here is a great book about Kansas's state flower: The Sunflower. Book Summary: A boy along with his father plants sunflower seeds in his yard. He then watches and tells about each stage of growth and what he likes to do when they are in full bloom.

Lesson Ideas:

Science: Sequencing the stages of how Sunflowers/flowers grow and learning about and labeling the parts of a Sunflower. The sequencing petal template came from The Mailbox Teacher's Helper Magazine April May 2006. You could probably search online and find something similar or students could make yellow petals and write and draw each stage. There are 6 stages/petals total on mine- though you can only see 2 of them.

National Science Standard:Life Science
-Characteristics of organisms
-Life cycles of organisms
-Organisms and environments

Writing: Cut out all the Sunflower parts. Before gluing on the petals, have students write words on each petal associated with Sunflowers. While the students are working, bring them a handful of sunflower seeds. Encourage them to taste them and use how they taste as one of the words they write. Glue down the seeds with actual glue, not glue stick. Once the sunflower is glued on, have the students copy the sentence prompt and finish the sentence with their own ideas. If time, they could decorate the background with a picture to go with their sentence, or maybe a field or garden where the sunflower may be found.

National Language Arts Standards:
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts.
They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge
of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary)
to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.