When the seed package says "giant sunflowers" that's what they really mean!

Unplugged Project--Sun

Sunshine and sunflowers go together around here, so that is how we approached this weeks Unplugged theme: SUN

We enjoyed these sunflower books from the library. Our favorite is Sunflower Sal. "Sal is a big girl in search of her special talents. She admires her grandmothers quilting ability and tries to quilt herself, but is dissatisfied with the results. With supportive encouragement from her family, Sal pursues her gift of planting sunflower seeds, and is beautifully rewarded at harvest time." Amazon review.

We also used sunlight to make this great sun print using Sunprint Paper.
This is an easy way to do a neat "sun" experiment.
DLTK provided us with the inspiration for this sunflower paper plate craft.
First we colored the petals of our sunflowers. We also colored the sunflower's face.

The next step is to glue the petals onto the paper plate.

I then put A LOT of glue into the center of the paper plate and the kids stuck A LOT of sunflower seeds into the glue. I was amazed at how many seeds they could actually get to stick onto the plate.

Luke had some unusual petals.

All done!! A very cute SUNflower.

Next week's Unplugged project is: DARK

What's Happening Outside

We started our morning today by using apples to stamp our apple tote bags. They came out nice, and hopefully we will use them in the apple orchard this weekend.

This afternoon I plan on starting this book as our read-aloud in honor of our apple unit this week.

After our apple printing we heading outside in search of nature.

Every year this maple tree is the first tree to show its colors.

We noticed our beautiful pine tree and all its pinecones.

The sunflowers are bending low, ready be harvested.

We laid them out on the picnic table to dry.

Hopefully, we can keep the birds away long enough to dry some for planting next spring.

We heading into the fields to look for signs of autumn.

We picked some milkweed pods to open.

We made the observation that they are a little to sticky yet to handle. Maybe it will be better in a week or two.

Out in our field there grows a wonderful apple tree. It is very heavy with apples this year. We have been reading about Johnny Appleseed this week to help celebrate his birthday tomorrow. Mark is pretty sure that Johnny Appleseed probably planted this very tree since it was here when we moved in 15 years ago, and that certainly was verrrry long ago.

Mark and Grace picked a few to nibble on today, but in the next few days we will pick more into our apple totes and bring them in and make applesauce from them.

Luke enjoyed his apple.

While Grace looked on, Kimberly ate hers,

oh, no, was that a worm!

I spotted some strange animals out in the yard. One monkey,

and another monkey!