After attending an Every Child Ready to Read 2 workshop, my library ordered a copy of Frances Barry's BIG YELLOW SUNFLOWER. It opens up into a sunflower, petal by petal, and I wanted to build a storytime around it. I was surprised with how many sunflower books we had so it was just a matter of finding flannelboard ideas to go with it. I found what I wanted at Making Learning Fun where they had "I'm a little Sunflower" rhyme and pattern. (They also have other related activities) I enlarged the pattern and cut it out of felt. As they suggested, I didn't glue the seeds on but I did make a lot of them. I made five sunflowers.
For my group, I had differing numbers of seeds on each flower from 3 to 8. We sang the verse with each flower, counting at the end of it. I had a very large group, so we did this as a group activity rather than having one child come up to count.
The flowers stayed up on the board while we read another story and did an action verse. When the time came for the next flannel board rhyme, I did a variation of a common five flowers rhyme.
FIVE BIG SUNFLOWERS
Five big sunflowers growing by the door,
I picked on for mother; that left four.
Four big sunflowers so beautiful to see,
I went and picked another one; that left three.
Three big sunflowers looking fresh and new,
Sue Ann picked one; that left two.
Two big sunflowers growing by the dog run,
John Paul picked one; that left one.
One big sunflower lifting toward the sun,
Until I went and picked it; that left none.
The other titles I used were: THE SUNFLOWER SWORD by Mark Sperring, SCARY MARY by Paula Bowles, and TEN SEEDS by Ruth Brown.
I purchased a sunflower bush and cut the sunflowers off (leaving a long stem). We then used them to do "Five Sunlowers" Eventually, I'd like to have enough flowers to hand out so each child could have on and we would just take the number out of the rhyme and do it as a group.
FIVE SUNFLOWERS
Five sunflowers standing in the sun
See their heads nodding, bowing one by one.
Down, down, down comes the gentle rain
And the five sunflowers lift up their heads again.
I found the site, Storytimes Online, very useful for finding fingerplay, song, and book ideas.
This week's Flannel Friday is being hosted by Miss Mary Liberry, check out all the wonderful ideas there!
