Sunflowers Through Nature and Art

This school year, I decided we needed to have nature study time and more art time. The kids love this kind of learning, and I discovered a couple of blogs that have inspired me in my new endeavor. Friday I decided to combine nature study with art to go along with the sunflowers we've been growing all summer. The sunflowers are getting heavy with seeds, so I thought this would be the perfect time to dissect one of the flowers. Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study has a sunflower Outdoor Hour challenge listed on her sidebar that I reviewed before getting started.

The kids and I discovered all kinds of things about God's creation as we studied the rays of the flower, it's florets, and the growing seeds underneath the florets in the disk of the flower.

We then studied Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers online and completed an art project that I found on Kathy Barbro's blog. Check out her blog, Art Projects for Kids, if you are looking for some great art ideas to do with kids.

Allison's drawing

Abby's and Chloe's drawing

Mom's and Grant's drawing

I Spy a Firewheel

Last night, we took a walk along the trails in the foothills of the Sandia mountains. A game I like to play with the kids is "I Spy". The object is to spy something on our walks that is interesting or different to them. Last night, Chloe spied this pretty little flower that we think is known as a Gaillardia, or Firewheel. The red and yellow center was unique to us!

Allison and Chloe collected lots of little wildflowers on our walk, and Allison helped Chloe press them today in her new flower press!

Southwest Desert Tree

We have a Yucca tree in our front yard that, being from Texas, amazes us. After the tree blooms, these spiny branches are left sticking out of the top of the tree.

After a wind storm last week, we found two of them on the ground by our front door!

So we had a little fun with them!

Autumn Beauty Bloom

We didn't know sunflowers could come in any other color other than yellow. We are enjoying our Autumn Beauty sunflowers.

Growing and Blooming

We haven't measured our plants yet, but we think some of them are nearing 7 feet tall!

And, we have our first bloom!

Sunflower Lapbook

If you don't know what a lapbook is, google it, and you'll find lots of information on lapbooking. Lapbooks are all the rage in education right now, and homeschoolers especially seem to love them. I have generally avoided incorporating them into our day because of the work and time that they take. Chloe, however, cannot get enough of coloring, cutting, and pasting. She cuts up every sheet of paper she sees and sticks it to something. If she isn't cutting paper, she's stapling it or clipping it together with paper clips. (Mmm... I think I figured out why my paper clip stash is diminishing.) Clearly, she has a need to do things with her hands! So, I have succumbed to the world of lapbooking---for Chloe.

This is the front of her lapbook on Sunflowers.

On the inside she has 2 simple flap books, lifecycle of the sunflower cards, sunflower coloring pages, and a color sheet of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers". She begged me to cut out her pictures, so they would look just right in her book.

Almost Ready to Bloom

For the last few days we have been finding buds on our sunflower plants, and we are pretty excited about the promise of a soon to be bloom.

Meanwhile, the plants seem to be growing taller every day.