Sunflower Hut!
by Theresa Farris
November 13, 2009
To recap: K/1
students from last school year, 2008-2009, shared the book “The
Sunflower House” by Eve Bunting. We purchased mammoth sunflower
seeds and planted them in the K/1 garden in hopes of being able to
pull the sunflowers together to make a sunflower house when school
started in Aug. this school year. But… the sunflowers bloomed in
July. So the K/1 students for the 2009-2010 school year took some
seeds from our harvested mammoth sunflowers and planted them the
first week of school in Aug. We had intentions of transplanting the
seedlings in the garden but there was so much rain we were not able
to follow that plan. So we did what all good problem solvers do and
came up with another solution. We transplanted them into
large buckets so they would have room to grow and kept them in the
greenhouse. We hoped that the autumn sun would provide enough light
to help them mature.
We measured the sunflowers every Monday to check their height. We
watered them and gave them fertilizer to help them grow to their
potential.
The sunflowers did mature and they bloomed last week. So we brought the plants, pots and all into the classroom to make our sunflower house. It didn’t turn out exactly like we had imagined. We ended up with more of a sunflower hut instead of a house. The sunflowers' heights ranged from 34 cm to 110 cm. We finally managed to arrange the sunflowers where we could tie them together to form the sunflower hut. Each student, with a little wiggling and squirming, managed to squeeze into the sunflower hut.
What have we learned from our sunflower experiment?
We learned during the summer months the sunflowers received enough water, and sunlight to mature to an average height of 186 cm. The sunflowers we planted in Aug. received enough water and sunlight to mature to an average height of 82 cm.
Since the first day of school we have been tracking when the sun sets every evening as part of our morning math time. What we concluded was the sunflowers that were planted in Aug. were receiving a minute less of sunlight everyday then the sunflowers planted in March, which had an impact on their growth.
We will do some research to figure out exactly when to plant our sunflowers so they will bloom in September, then we will hopefully prove the old saying “third time is a charm” to be true and finally get to make a sunflower house. Check back in the spring to follow the 3rd phase of the sunflower house experiment.
