Last week’s sunny weather reminded me of one of my favourite flowers, the sunflower! With British Science Week in full swing, we have been encouraged to include STEM activities into our lessons … a perfect opportunity to plant some sunflowers of our own!
The children have learnt about the life cycle of the sunflower, from seed to flower, then back to seed. They’ve each planted a sunflower of their own, whispering the encouragement ‘grow tall’, in to each pot! We’ve learnt a new word ‘heliotropic’, which means ‘to follow the sun’ which is what the sunflower head does as it grows.
Mrs Reed told us that ‘helios’ is Greek for sun. The tallest sunflower ever recorded grew to 30 feet, which is six Mrs Wilson’s stood on top of each other! Plus, that the whole of a sunflower is edible, in Mexico they put them on their BBQ and the stems taste a bit like celery!
What a lot of knowledge from one little seed!