Sharing Nature Articles and Activities

Experiencing Sunflowers
by Peter Moser
 

Each summer, approximately one hundred students enter our teacher training program. On one of our first field trips, I take them to an ancient oak grove where they experience a Flow Learning program as described in the Sharing Nature Worldwide Journal, Vol. 1. (German-speaking teachers may want read my article in the teacher's periodical kindergarten, Spring 2000, called "From the Living Space of a Tree to the Pyramid of Life").

After this emotional step, students learn the theory of Flow Learning (cognitive step), then they are assigned the task of planning a Flow Learning program for kindergarten or primary school (pragmatic step). The programs are developed by small groups of students, and it is always exciting to see their first presentation. Below is an outline for a wonderful class on "Experiencing Sunflowers."

Sunflowers

Stage 1: Awaken Enthusiasm

Before we get to see the field of sunflowers, we stop in a nearby field or forest and tell the children to "draw" sunflowers on the ground as a visual memory. They can use stones, leaves, etc., and they are told to create sunflowers as big as one meter in diameter. The pictures form a kind of land art which can be photographed.

The children then get green shawls and scarfs and yellow paint to color their faces. Dressed and painted as sunflowers, we walk to the field of sunflowers.

Stage 2: Focus Attention

The French name for the sunflower is tournesol, which describes perfectly the sunflower's ability to follow the sun during the day (tourner=to turn, soleil=sun). The children should experience the typical behavior of this plant.

With their eyes closed, the children have to find their best position to the sun. Then, with eyes still closed, they try to eat some seeds from the sunflowers and touch their leaves.

Stage 3: Direct Experience

Each child chooses a real sunflower, watches it as closely as possible and then draws it. We often ask the students if they can see the spiral formation of the young seeds.

Stage 4: Share Inspiration

We then compare the visual memory from stage 1 to the pictures of stage 3. We talk about how the children found their direction to the sun (warming beams, light, etc.) and figure out how to form a sundial with a sunflower. We plant a seed in little pots to keep alive the children's enthusiasm and idealism by raising new sunflowers (for the new millenium).

Thus, every year around one hundred new teachers leave our college and bring Flow Learning to the schools of our district, and to all over Switzerland.

Peter Moser studied biology at the University of Basel. He then worked in medical biochemistry and clinical chemistry. After his formation for primary school teachers, he taught 4th and 5th grades. He now teaches didactics in the special field "Men and Environment" at the teacher training college of Liestal/Switzerland.

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