Sunflower Project

Did you ever wonder how many seeds are in the middle of a sunflower head? How about how sunflowers grow or what they need to live? Well, my students did. We have been investigating these questions, and more, in our classroom the last couple of weeks. We have learned a lot about the seeds, looked at Vincent Van Gogh's sunflower art, and even taken a field trip to the neighborhood next door to visit Emma's garden where our sunflower grew. The students have made choices about the topics they are interested in learning more about each week. Some choices have included studying Van Gogh's artwork more in depth and creating their own sunflower art. Other choices have involved investigating the sunflower head and sorting and counting the seeds. Some students have been busy reading more about flowers and their needs.

This week many students focused on finding out how many seeds were in the sunflower head. Before we removed the seeds, we estimated and guessed how many there were. Guesses ranged from 100-10,000 seeds.

Students then removed the seeds and placed them in a jar. Nathan predicted that the jar would not be able to hold all of the seeds. He was right, and we had to place them into a baggie instead.

The next day students decided to sort the seeds into groups of ten. That was a lot of groups, so then they decided to put ten groups of ten to make 100. We put the 100 seeds into a small baggie.

Our results:
- 10 bags of 100...that made 1,000
- 4 more bags of 100
- 1 bag with 78 left over.

Altogether the sunflower had 1,478 seeds inside it! Many students guessed 1,000. They were pretty close. Even Miss Smelser and Ms. Wright didn't estimate that many.