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Grow a Magical Sunflower House for Grades PreK-6 A fun activity for summer school classes or for kids and parents. . . Materials: Several packets of sunflower seeds, several varieties including giant sunflowers; a packet of morning glory or scarlet runner bean seeds; hoe; tape measure; wooden stakes (sticks will work); string. Easy Instructions: Choose a flat, sunny area in your playground or backyard where there is little or no grass. Pull up or chop down weeds to clear a floor. Using your hoe, trace a wide outline of the floor of your house, chopping soil as you go. Put stakes in the ground to mark your outline (about two feet apart, just inside your "chopped" line). Run string from stake to stake to make a string outline of your floor (wrap string around each stake three or four times). REMEMBER to make a door in your outline. Plant tall sunflowers in the chopped soil outline to make the walls of your house. Plant sunflowers in two wiggley lines (staggered rows) all the way around, so that walls will be thick. DON'T plant over your door. Follow planting directions on seed packets and remember that you're going to have to thin seedlings to 2 feet apart. Lightly water your newly planted seeds—and come back every day to be sure that soil is moist. Morning glories and runner beans are vines that will grow around your sunflowers, filling in walls. When sunflowers are well established (about 8 inches tall and thinned to two feet apart), plant morning glories and runner beans in spaces between sunflowers. DON'T plant over your door. Be sure to keep soil around these new seeds moist. If you're not getting much rain, you'll want to water your sunflowers, too, to keep them healthy and help them grow faster. As your house begins to grow up, you may want to plant some little flowers around it. Petunias and marigolds would be nice; pansies, Johnny-jump-ups, and other violas will grow well in the light shade on the east and north sides. Be sure to weed around your plants—or they may not grow. Watch them closely to be sure that they're getting all the water and weeding they need. It will take a long time—about two months—for your house to grow. But when it's finished—WOW, a live house that you made yourself, filled with cool shade and magic light. |
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