Shelly and her kids learn all about the life cycle of a sunflower using printable resources from Activity Village in this lovely guest post.
Making a Sunflower Life Cycle Poster and Booklet
By Shelly
We have been spending quite a bit of time in our garden sorting out our little growing areas (we try to grow some vegetables each year as a learning activity) and we naturally started talking about plant life cycles. So I thought it would be good to reinforce our garden chats with an activity. I suggested we make a plant life cycle poster and both kids liked the idea. They like making their own posters to hang up on the cork boards that we have.
I started by showing them the sunflower life cycle slideshow on my computer and then actually ended up printing it out as it is a lovely summary.
We then decided to use the sunflower life cycle colouring page as our starting point. So both kids got busy colouring in the different stages of the sunflower’s life.
Colouring in the life cycle of a sunflower colouring page
We cut out each individual stage. While we were deciding on a layout, my son decided we needed a centre image. So we had a quick search of the sunflower themed pages and they both liked the idea of using the sunflower colouring page as the centre image of their poster.
Colouring in the sunflower colouring page
We placed the sunflower head in the centre and stuck the different life cycle stages around it. I must admit I do agree with my son, having something in the centre of the poster did seem to tie it all together.
Sticking the pictures down to make the poster
After sticking our images down we started labelling the different stages. If younger kids are unsure of spelling the sunflower life cycle poster page could be handy.
Adding words to her poster
I like the end results of our sunflower life cycle posters and they look great pinned up on the cork boards!
One of our finished posters
While we were busy making our life cycle posters my son suggested we make a sunflower booklet as well. His idea was very similar to the butterfly life cycle booklet that we made last year, only this time he wanted to leave the pages empty so he could write on them – he says it is going to be a garden diary. We printed out two of the sunflower colouring pages onto yellow card for the front and back cover of his booklet.
We cut out the flower and using that as a template traced around it onto some lined paper (these will be the pages that he can write on) and cut those pages out as well.
Creating the sunflower booklet
He glued these together slightly differently than last time. He folded the sunflower pages about 1/3 of the way and then glued this first section down. It's a very simple way of making a booklet but it is a method that he can do by himself, which he likes.
The finished booklet, ready to be written in
Our homemade sunflower booklet
This is a guest post from Shelly. Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 8 and 10. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on the different learning activities that they do including lots of hand-on maths, arts and crafts and anything else that is part of their home educating lifestyle.
You can find more guest posts by Shelly, and a list of all our guest posts, here.
