For kids · ages 5–12
Sunflowers for kids
Colour them in, do an experiment at the kitchen table, count the seeds in a spiral or follow your own plant from seed to giant. Everything on this page is free to print or do.
Did you know? What looks like one big flower is actually hundreds of tiny flowers together. And a sunflower can grow taller than a house: the tallest one ever was 9.17 metres — as tall as three storeys!
A sunflower is one of the most fun plants to explore. It grows super fast, it gets gigantic, and it does odd things — like turning its head during the day to follow the sun. Below you can choose what you want to do: colour, craft, an experiment, or grow a plant yourself. Want to know more first about how the flower works? Then have a look at biology.
Colouring pages
Eight colouring pages to print. The flower is exactly right, so you learn from it straight away.
Worksheets
Cut out the life cycle, count the seeds and stick the right name on each part of the flower.
Experiments
Make a flower change colour, grow a bean in a jar and count the Fibonacci spirals.
Grow diary
Follow your own sunflower for 14 weeks. Measure it every week and add a photo.
Three things that make a sunflower really special
1. It isn't one flower, but hundreds. The brown centre is made up of hundreds, up to two thousand, mini-flowers. Each mini-flower later makes one seed. The yellow "petals" around the edge are also separate flowers. How that works exactly, you can see under the anatomy of the flower head.
2. The seeds lie in a secret pattern. If you look closely at the centre, you see spirals turning. Count them: they are nearly always numbers from a special sequence that mathematicians call the Fibonacci sequence, such as 34 and 55. Nature does maths! Read more about it under Fibonacci.
3. Young plants look at the sun. A young sunflower turns its head during the day to follow the sun, from east to west, and back again at night. That is called heliotropism. Once the flower is grown up, it stops and looks east forever. Why? That's explained under heliotropism.
Grow a sunflower yourself
The very best experiment lasts a whole summer: sow your own sunflower. Here's how:
- Wait until it no longer freezes outside at night — in temperate Europe that's around mid-May.
- Push a seed about 2 centimetres deep into the ground or into a big pot of soil.
- Water it when the soil feels dry. Put the pot in the sunniest spot you have.
- After about a week a little green plant pops up. After that it goes fast!
Keep track in your grow diary of how tall it gets each week. Tall varieties such as Russian Mammoth grow taller than Mum or Dad. Want a little one for the windowsill? Then choose Teddy Bear. The grown-up steps from sowing to harvesting are set out for the big people under growing.
For teachers and parents
All the material on this page is free to use in class or at home. The colouring pages and worksheets are pitched at primary school years and tie in with lessons on the life cycle of plants, measuring and recognising patterns. The experiments use only safe, everyday things. Background information with sources for your own preparation can be found on the pages about biology and growing.
Tip for parents: let a child "adopt" a sunflower and give it a name. Research shows that children pay more attention and keep going longer when they look after their own plant — and a sunflower grows fast enough to hold their attention.