Sunflower Unit
I was in the beginning phases of planning a sunflower mini unit when I saw Green Urban Creative’s Summer Bundle. I had the urge to shift my summer plans…. but I decided to stick with the plans I already had and utilize the summer art study, sunflower unit, and the landforms/water form cards this summer. I can’t wait to plug in the rest of the summer bundle over the next two summers! I had planned to print or DIY much of what was already included in the sunflower materials so this find saved me some time. I only added a two poems to this unit. Here’s what we did for our sunflower unit:
Plant Sunflower Tent/Garden
The deer promptly destroyed this as soon as it began to come up. But the girls had fun planting it! I need to brainstorm on how to protect it from them next year.
Let’s Learn About Sunflowers Read Aloud
This is a sheet form the summer bundle that I simply laminated and put on the shelf. I read it during circle time and then we moved on to the Anatomy of the sunflower. I’ll read it as often as she requests.
Anatomy of the Sun Flower Puzzle
I laminated a labeled anatomy of the Sun Flower Sheet and displayed it on the top of our shelf. I will leave this up as long as she is interested in the puzzle work. I put the puzzle work in a tray and then she completed it. She is pre-reading, but she only got up once to check her work and completed this correctly the first time. She has been matching words to the correct three part card for a while now so this wasn’t a new skill.
Lifecyle of the Sunflower 3 Part Cards
She really enjoyed this work. She is beginning to breeze through matching the print cards to the main cards and enjoys reaching for this first. We are so close to organic reading! We are nearing the end of the sound games and will be introducing sandpaper letters in September. Very exciting!
Lifecycle of the Sunflower Mat/Puzzle
Write
Tens Counting Board
She does great with counting and breezed through this work. She did not select it on her own from the shelf after initially working with the material simply because it was so easy. She is organically working on counting through 60 right now and is very comfortable through 30. Little sis on the other hand absolutely loved it! It is fine motor work for her and practicing how to be gentle with our materials.
Poetry
We had a cute little poem called “The Little Plant” by Kate Lousie Brown that came with the Sunflower Art Study from Green Urban Creative. She paired with with a black and white image of the progression of the sunflower Lifecyle from seed to sunflower. I used it in circle time the day I initially modeled the sunflower’s lifecycle. In addition to this we did: an excerpt from “Sunflower Sutra” by Allen Ginsberg (definitely needs to be an excerpt for littles!), and “Ah! Sunflower” by William Blake. These are read first during our morning circle time and then again anytime requested. Sometimes we like to read some poetry to the girls in the evening too.
Art Study
We did two pieces of art that were included in the bundle from Green Urban Creative. I had originally planned to do three when I found this summer bundle. Two of the three I had selected were already included in the bundle, so I opted just to use what they had. That way we would have ample time to get through our summer art study as well. We did Bouquet of Sunflowers by Claude Monet and Vase with Twelve Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh. Both girls enjoyed recreating the paintings themselves the most.
Sunflower Field Hike
We were able to go to a state park not to far from us and hike to a beautiful sunflower field. Once we got to the sunflowers, we explored and then nature journaled the sunflower field.
This unit took us just over a week. It was fun and will likely make it back into the seasonal rotation again in the future!
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