Seriously, sunflowers?
Here in New England, it's harvest time! That means everywhere you look, there are pumpkins, scarecrows, cornstalks, apples, and yes, sunflowers! The biggest country fairs of the year are among us! Since they're excited by their surroundings, let's work with it! After all, you've got to have a gimmick, don't you?
(Flashback to a post I did ages ago, called Gotta Get a Gimmick.)
Well, my gimmick for this week will be sunflowers, since that's what they're excited about!
Seriously, sunflowers are just the "vessel," but there's going to be some real learning!
This is one of my most popular math games! It's an important skill (mental math with tens and hundreds), it's easy to differentiate, and it's so much fun that kids will want to play it repeatedly!
Then, of course, there's a fun mini-booklet to read! Although I'm sure you have several books about sunflowers in your classroom, don't they just love to have a book they can hold in their own hands! Plus, these printable mini-booklets are perfect to use in reading groups, since the students can write in them! ("Underline the short a words in yellow." or "How many times can you find the word seeds on page 1?")
Oh, yes, and there are books! Here are a couple of my favorites!
- Roast some sunflower seeds!
- Plant some sunflower seeds outside your school! (Yes, this needs to be done in the spring, but last year's students are still watching the ones they planted, and this year's students will want to continue this tradition in the spring!
- Google some other recipes that use sunflower seeds. (There are plenty!)
- Make a craft with sunflower seeds. (Again, google!)
- Write a story (fiction or non-fiction) about sunflowers!
- Estimate a sunflower's seeds. Or just a jar of sunflower seeds.
- Measure the heads of the sunflowers in your sunflower garden and graph them.
- I'll bet you can think of plenty more ways to enjoy sunflowers!