make a cupcake liner and coffee filter {sun} flower

Back in November when we had our week of sunflowers, the kiddos make these fun coffee filter and cupcake liner flowers to take home.

 

I set up a table with all the supplies to create sunflowers along with a vase of flowers for inspiration. There were three different colors/prints of cupcake liners, brown coffee filters, tissue paper, sunflower seeds, and gluesticks. The children began with a coffee filter (though some chose not to use one) and layered on their cupcake liners after they flattened them. When they were happy with their layers, they picked a number between one and ten then counted out the corresponding number of sunflower seeds to glue onto the center of their flower-to-be.

 

 

As the glue dried on their flowers, they selected a stick (dried branches from my grapevine) and to paint with green paint they mixed up on their own choosing from a selection of blues and yellow paint (thus revisiting little blue and little yellow). Glitter is always a choice (gotta use those pinching grips) and a wee tissue leaf or two was squished atop the wet paint. Once the stems were dry, the children squeezed out a blob of glue onto their stem and placed their flower where they wanted it. This was a project that focused on following steps with a lot of fun discussion in between.

our week of sunflowers

Fall is a lovely time to study sunflowers. Our literature for the week was The Lion and the Mouse. I added sunflowers to the mix since they were growing all over town and in season. It helps that a sunflower can resemble an artistic lion...if you squint a bit.

 

My sunflowers at home had gone past a few weeks before and I saved one of the dried head for exploration. Since I had no fresh flowers I picked up a bouquet at Trader Joe's and popped them all about the classroom. One large bunch was featured on our nature and science table and one of the students got to exploring it with a cinnamon stick. Of course!

 

 

Before placing the flower head on the table, I brushed at it a bit to make it a smidge less pokey. The children explored it with our magnifying glasses and used tweezers to remove seeds.

We also had a jar of store bought seeds for scooping and pouring. SOe of the seeds made their way to our play-dough table.

 

I made the dough and added a bit of lavender oil for scent. Add some seeds and some glitter and the children played and played for the longest time!

As we observed our sunflowers, the children named the colors they saw and we sorted our beads to make our own sunflower colored bracelets.

There was also some dissection going on. We wrote down the words the children used to describe what they saw, felt, and smelled. We talked about our senses as we made our observations.

 

The children painted up egg cartons and scooped out seeds into green paper envelopes to take home for home sorting and playing. They were so proud! At the end of the week I sent the children home with a recipe for chocolate covered sunflower seed oatmeal cookies. Those were super tasty! We also did a lot of arty projects which I will post next. Sunflowers were a lot of fun to explore for the week. We will definitely do it again!