Upon returning to school after closure due to COVID-19, the children in room 138 were greeted by sunflowers growing in our nature courtyard. This sparked an interest in plants that lead into a study lasting several months and meeting numerous early learning standards. The children watched as the sunflowers grew over the summer eventually becoming taller than themselves. Teachers took this as an opportunity to introduce new vocabulary words such as seed, petal, leaf, root, etc. The children noticed different seeds on various plants in our outdoor spaces. The children’s interest led us to use more plants and natural materials in the classroom to further their exploration and curiosity. We built fine motor skills by weaving flowers into colanders and using tongs to dissect sunflowers. The children and teachers created art together by gluing and sticking leaves, branches, and milkweed seed pods to a poster board. We also built our math skills by sorting fall leaves and seeds by color/size and discussing short/tall while observing the sunflowers. Finally, we watched the sunflowers turn brown and droop over which began a study on the changes of plants and trees in the fall. Participating in this project allowed our children to gain skills that met the following Ohio Early Learning standards: social/emotional development, approaches toward learning, cognitive and general knowledge, language development, and fine motor development.
