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Project Approach Sunflower  Children’s Sunflower Garden In the outdoor play area the children planted sunflower seeds and we have
been watching them grow all summer long. Phase One Beginning the Project Our
sunflower project started out as a planting project, since we live in an agricultural area we wanted the children to have
an outside garden in the play area that could be observed daily. We asked the students what they would
like to plant in the garden and we came up with their list. We asked the children and their parents to
look around their home to see if they could find seed that we could plant in the garden. The children came
in the following day with seed packs and bags. Next we went through the seed packs to see if any matched our wish list of
what to plant. Sunflowers Cucumbers Pumpkins Corn As the children observed their garden
they saw that the sunflowers were growing. “Teacher, teacher the sunflower is taller then the pill
bugs.” “It is shorter than the cat.” This was the day that we decided
to start a project on sunflowers. Phase Two Developing the Project We crated a web based on what the children what to know about the sunflowers.  We then started a growth chart of the sunflower. As the days and week went
by the children observed the growth of the sunflowers. Here are their observations. “Taller then the pill bug, but shorter then the cat.” “Taller then the cat, but shorter then the children.” “Taller then the children, but shorter then you teacher.” “Taller then the teacher.” We
measured the sunflower with yarn and taped it to butcher paper with the children’s dictations. As we waited for the sunflower to mature into a sunflower the children observed other things
going on in the garden so we put the sunflower project in the plans to continue observing until the day we could harvest our
sunflowers. We created another web of the interest of
the children. This helped us to continue on the project of the garden and planting. We
took the large web and made small webs for each interest area.  As the sunflowers started flower the children observed the bees coming around.
That is when the bee discussion began. Bees began to appear in the creative art area.
We took the interest of bees and broke it into pollen, honey, honey combs, bees wax and bee hives.
As the flowers started blooming the children wanted to add flowers to our play house area.
The planting and replanting began.
Harvest of the sunflowers
Children sorted them by size
Children add the insects that they learned
about as their sunflowers grew outside.
Children created their own version of a sunflower
with the help of their friends.
The children cut the flowers from the garden
to make an arrangement for the classroom.
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