Sunflower
Toddler · 2–3A big sunny sunflower with a brown middle. Color the yellow petals and the center! A cheerful way to talk about summer and how flowers follow the sun. Print it on A4 or US Letter, or color it online with tap-to-fill.
A big centre and a ring of petals
A sunflower is the opposite proportion to a daisy: an enormous textured centre with a ring of long petals around the outside. The centre is the largest single region in this category, and it is the part worth taking time over.
Those petals radiate outwards, which makes them a good counting set and a good place to try shading from dark at the base to light at the tip — an easy effect that makes a simple page look considerably better.
Flowers that follow the sun
Young sunflowers turn through the day to face the sun, which is one of the very few plant behaviours fast enough for a child to notice. They are also among the easiest things to grow from seed, get startlingly tall, and produce seeds you can count at the end — which is about as complete a project as gardening with a four-year-old gets.
Frequently asked questions
- Do sunflowers really follow the sun?
- Young ones do, turning through the day to face it. Once fully grown they generally settle facing east. It is one of the few plant movements a child can actually observe.
- What age is this page for?
- Three to seven. Simple as flat colour, and the large centre and radiating petals give older children room to try shading.