It's starting to finally feel like spring and everything is coming to life. This is a great time to support your child's curiosity about the natural world - flowers, trees, insects - there's so much to stop, explore, and talk about.

That's why we've created a new activity bundle for this week - all about sunflowers. All the activities and recommended ages are below.

Cutting and Pasting Activity - Cut Insects and Paste onto a Sunflower

Ages: 1-5

Purpose: Develop fine motor skills through cutting and pasting.

• Cut out insects commonly found on sunflowers and glue them to the sunflowers.
  
• For younger children, those that aren't ready to use scissors, you can cut the insects for them. You can even skip the glue if you don't feel comfortable with your child using glue. Instead, use the cards to develop vocabulary and name the insects, arranging them on the sunflower without glue.

Ss Dot Printable

Ages: 2-5

Purpose: Letter recognition and development of fine motor skills

• Use stickers or dot markers to fill in the circles within the S.
• Practice the S sound by saying S is for s-s-s-sunflower, drawing attention to the S sound.
• Trace the S with index finger.

Sunflower Dot Printable

Ages: 2-5

Purpose: Art exploration and development of fine motor skills.

• Use stickers or dot markers to fill in the circles within the sunflower.
• Extension: Colour in the background (around the circles) with crayons, markers, or coloured pencils.
• Extension: Cut out the sunflower.

Sunflower Construction Paper Collage

Ages: 2-5

Purpose: Art exploration and development of fine motor skills.

• Rip up pieces of yellow and black construction paper. Glue the yellow pieces onto the petals and the black pieces into the centre.
• Extension: Cut out the sunflower.

Sequencing Cards - Sunflower

Ages: 3-5

Purpose: Language development (words like before/after and first/last), development of storytelling skills, as well as logic and problem-solving skills. Foster curiosity for natural world.

• For younger children, start with few cards (i.e. cards 2, 4, and 6). As they master the 3 cards, add in more.
• Extension: if your child is interested in these, click here to download a set of 4 different sequencing cards 

Sunflower Counting and Number Symbols

Ages: 3-4

Purpose: To help children connect quantity with number symbols and development of fine motor skills, if you use clothes pins.

• In a Montessori classroom, an activity like this would be done with clothespins, where the child clips the clothespin over the correct number symbol. This is a great way to add fine motor development into the activity.
• If you don't have clothes pins available, simply have your child count the petals and then circle the corresponding number symbol below.

Sunflower Counting and Number Symbols - Part 2

Ages: 3-5

Purpose: To help children connect quantity with number symbols and strengthen the hand and pencil grip.

• This 2-page printable is the next step to Part 1 (above). In this printable, the number symbol is not provided so children are required to count the items and then write the number symbol on the right.
• For children newer to number symbols, start by only offering page 1, with quantities of 1-4. Once they have mastered this page, add in page 2.

Lifecycle of a Sunflower

Ages: 3.5+

Purpose: To foster curiosity for natural world and develop an understanding of sequencing and the passage of time.

• Cut out the circles at the bottom of page 2. Using the control sheet as a reference(page 1), put the stages of the lifecycle in order.

Click here to download all the sunflower activities in one PDF.

Also, note that all the activities will last longer if you laminate them or cover them with Con-tact paper.