Richard Lee Primary School

2018 was our first year being involved in The Big Sunflower Project. We wrote and asked if we could be a part of the project and one afternoon, we received some Russian Giant sunflower seeds in the post. The children (aged 3/4 years old) were so excited.

We talked about how some children are born poorly and by growing sunflowers, we can think about those children as the sunflowers grow taller and stronger. The children learnt we had to care for the seeds as they grew into seedlings, needing soil, water and sunshine.

We enjoyed regularly measuring them. When our tallest grew to over 9ft tall, a photo even made it into the local newspaper.

In the summer, we had a beekeeper visit us. He told us bees are important in our garden, and their favourite coloured flowers are yellow, blue and white. Lots of bees have visited our sunflowers this year.

When the tallest stem broke in strong winds, learning still went on. We learnt that the stem measured 20 rubber bricks long. Then we used tweezers to harvest the seeds for next year. We also put some seeds in a hollowed out pumpkin to feed the birds.