Sewn Sunflowers

 Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers! They bring such joy and a promise of summer.

For our preschool "Sew Me a Story" series, we decided to stitch up sunflowers that will last all season long.   We read the wonderful Camille and the Sunflowers  to gain inspiration and get us started.  While we love this book about Vincent vanGogh, there are so many wonderful sunflower books out there like To Be Like the Sun and The Tiny Seed.

 The first step is sew the middle. Cut 2 pieces of burlap using a CD as the template.  You can certainly make the flowers larger if you like.  

Sew all around leaving a hole for stuffing.  Scrunched up tissue paper makes great stuffing for these little sunflowers.  After stuffing the circle, stitch up the hole.

Now it's time to add petals!  We used craft foam for the petals since we sewed with plastic needles, but older kids could use felt.

 Each flower needs about 5 petals.  The kids loved choosing their petals.

Every sunflower needs sunflower seeds!  We let the kids cut out seeds from black felt and use glue stick to attach them to their flower.

 For the stem, we hot glued a bamboo skewer into the flower.  This way, they can easily be stuck into a pot.

 When kids finished, they had fun using oil pastels to create sunflower masterpieces.  With preschoolers, it's always important to have an "I'm finished" activity to keep them engaged.

Love this little field of sunflowers!