Unit Four A fall unit study
Sunflowers
A young sunflower turns its head to follow the sun all day, then settles facing east once it blooms. We look hard at the seed head and find the two spirals running through it at once.
Every page, nothing held back
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1 The cover
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2 The books
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3 The poems
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4 The science lesson
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5 The activity and the craft
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6 Measured, and dated
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7 The copywork page
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8 Sunflower math, one
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9 Sunflower math, two
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10 A devotion, five days
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11 The recipe
Page two
The four books
Read aloud, more than once, in no particular order. Each one is annotated — why it is here and what to watch for. If one of the four is out at the library, four is not the point.
- Sunflower House — Eve Bunting
- From Seed to Sunflower — Gerald Legg
- Camille and the Sunflowers — Laurence Anholt
- Sunflower — Miela Ford
The books are not included and they are not for sale here. They are library books, which is the point.
Page four
The science lesson
A young sunflower follows the sun and swings back east overnight — the stem grows unevenly on each side to make it turn. Once the flower opens it stops travelling and stays facing east. The head is not one flower but hundreds of tiny ones, and the seeds sit in two sets of spirals running opposite ways.
It opens with what the parent needs to know, written for someone who has not thought about it since school. Then a demonstration to do at the table, and one question afterward.
“Which way does it look in the morning?”
Ask it once. Then be quiet and let the answer come, however long it takes.
And then the rest of it.
- The poems
- Traditional garden rhyme, said aloud once a day until it is theirs by Friday. Then “Ah! Sun-flower” — William Blake, read once on the last day and deliberately not explained.
- The activity
- Who is taller — the child stood shoulder to shoulder with the tallest sunflower you can find, then both measured and the date written down to keep for next autumn.
- The craft
- A sunflower with real seeds, glued in a spiral out from the centre rather than filled in — then two full minutes looking at the Van Gogh before describing it face down, from memory.
- Math
- Counting, number bonds to ten, tally marks, which pile has more, and word problems to read aloud — all of it about sunflowers.
- The copywork page
- “The sunflower turns to find the sun.” on three-line ruling — two lines traced, the rest left blank.
- A devotion, five days
- 5 days, two minutes each at the table — a verse, a sentence, and one line to pray together. New King James Version. Psalm 84:11 · Matthew 5:45 · Psalm 139:14 · 2 Corinthians 3:18 · Psalm 126:3.
- Sunflower seed butter energy balls
- Fifteen minutes and no heat at all, which is why the whole recipe is the child’s. The child’s job and the adult’s job are written out separately, so nobody has to guess who holds the knife.
- What you will need
- Four books from the library, a sunflower or a doorframe, a tape measure, sunflower seeds, and a printer.
Take the sunflowers unit.
$5.95, once, for the whole unit as a print-ready PDF. No account and no login — it arrives by email, and it is yours to print as often as you like for the children in your own house.
On its way.
Check your inbox for the copywork page — and the spam folder, if it isn’t there in a few minutes. I’ll write again when the next unit is done.