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The Great Sunflower Project
Over the past few months, the children of Marne Road Kindy have been amazed by the transformation of our garden into a giant array of Sunflowers cared for by the children through each step of the project. The children nurtured the seeds as they planted them in the ground ensuring there was enough sunlight, water and shade so they could sprout too their best potential. The children were keen to see how big these sunflowers were growing and there were a lot of inquiries and questions from the children.
Each day out came the watering cans, the buckets and cups to provide extra water as the heat of Summer was upon us. As the children noticed the changes there were children on hand to document the increased height through measuring and documenting this on our chart, measuring the growth of the sunflower against the height of our friends.
We were absolutely amazed as the flowers began to bloom and some were a bright yellow and others had a tinge of red through the petals of the sunflowers. The children were so proud to share with their families the detailed learning through Literacy,, Numeracy and Science experiences in caring for this space, hearing the buzzing bees as they enjoyed collecting pollen from our flowers and observing the various birds throughout our community pop in for lunch on sunflower seeds.
The children have now collected all the seeds and petals from the remaining flowers which have been used in arts and crafts, bird feeders for Beststart at home projects during lockdown and now the remaining seeds in a safe place to recreate this project next season and share with our sister centres in the Papakura Area.
This sunflower project has increased the children's senses for exploring the bugs and insects, bees collecting the pollen, birds enjoying a feast, the subtle smell throughout our play space and harvesting the seeds in our play to dry, to taste and to use as we crushed for oil for cooking. We have learnt so much in this project over the past few months.