The Science of... Sunflowers

One of the best projects I ever did with children was the sunflower project. Children, teachers, and families were fascinated by the brown sunflower heads I brought in to study. We did sunflower paintings ala Van Gough, made sunflower murals and told sunflower stories. Here are some sunflower facts and sunflower resources:

• Sunflowers are in the Asteraceae family, which means star-shaped flower. Why do you think they call it that? They are related to daisies, asters, and dandelions.
• Their Latin name, Helianthus annuus, literally means sun annual.
• Sunflowers are native to North America, but now are grown in many places throughout the world.
• Sunflowers come in several shades of yellows, oranges, reds, and even greens.
• The head of a sunflower is actually composed of dozens of florets in a spiral pattern.
  
• Sunflowers come in many sizes, from dwarf to giants up to 25 feet tall!
  
• Sunflowers come in many varieties with fun names such as ‘baby bear’, ‘mammoth’, ‘elf’, and ‘lemonade’.
  
• Sunflowers growing outside follow the sun as it moves through the daytime sky.

Here's a great sunflower science activity:

Dissect a sunflower head. You will need a sunflower head from a farm stand, a table covered with paper, trays for sorting, tweezers, magnifying glasses. Examine the sunflower. Notice the spiral pattern of the seeds. How is it different than a growing sunflower?

Resources about sunflowers:

• http://www.burpee.com/ This site has photos and descriptions of several varieties of sunflowers. You can see the different colors as well as the names of sunflower varieties.
• http://www.google.com/ Enter sunflowers and click on images. This site has hundreds of photographs and sunflower paintings.
• This is the Sunflower, L. Schafer and D. Crews. Greenwillow, 2000.
• Sunflower House, E. Bunting. Voyager Books. 1999.
• From Seed to Sunflower, G. Legg. Watts, 1998.