Exploring the Parts of a Sunflower Activity

Today we are sharing an activity for kids to learn about the parts of a sunflower in a hands-on way!  My kids just loved exploring real sunflowers like this.

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Exploring Sunflowers with Kids:

I actually took these photos almost 2 years ago!  We had visited a farm and picked our very own sunflowers. It was so much fun! They lasted quite a while in a vase on my table, but as they started to fall apart, I thought it would be fun to let the boys finish taking them apart to look at all of the little parts. It was at that time that we learned that sunflowers are composite flowers, and are actually made up of many tiny flowers!

Here’s an Instagram post from the time:

One of our sunflowers started falling apart. So we decided to "dissect" it 😝 🌻🌻🌻 Did you know the sunflower is a composite flower? It is made up up lots of individual flowers. The "petals" are ray flowers. The dark center is packed with tons of tiny disc flowers. Who knew!? 🌻🌻🌻 By the way, it only looked this organized for two seconds. I let them freely take it apart after we looked at each part. It was a flower explosion 😆 #learnsomethingneweveryday #handsonlearning #natureplay

A post shared by Emily | To be a Kid Again (@creativelittleexplorers) on Aug 5, 2016 at 1:29pm PDT

Storybook Science

Today we are participating in the Storybook Science with Inspiration Laboratories.  During this series, there will be a new science activity to go along with a children’s book.  This week is about garden science and things that can be done in the garden or backyard!

We recently found the book, This is the Sunflower by Lola M. Schaefer, at our local library.  This book is a great introduction of sunflowers. It looks at the blossom and the seeds, and how they’re scattered to make new sunflowers.

Getting the Parts of a Sunflower Activity Ready:

Materials:

• a sunflower
• age-appropriate tools for taking them apart (plastic tweezers are great). My kids just used their fingers!

**An adult will need to cut the sunflower in half.

To prepare this activity, I cut the sunflower in half after we had already talked about the parts before cutting it.

Doing the Exploring Sunflowers Activity and Learning About Parts of a Sunflower:

First we talked about the basic parts of a sunflower. Parts like, blossom, stem, leaf, petals, and so on.

After that, I cut the sunflower in half so we could see the inside.

Here are some of the parts we talked about:

Next, I let the kids simply take it apart as they pleased. They had the most fun plucking the disc florets out of the center.

We also sorted the parts as we talked about them.

Now that it’s been a little while, we are going to have to do this activity again!

Check out more great Storybook Science activities here: