In the classroom this week, we watched a video called The Sunflower’s Secret History and learned that sunflowers are native to what is now North America. Their iconic, giant heads that produce large seeds are the product of years of Indigenous agricultural innovation.
In the kitchen, we made a salad featuring five facets of the sunflower: the petals (from our friends at Full Belly Farm in nearby Yolo County), the seeds, the tubers (called sunchokes or Jerusalem artichokes), the sprouts, and the oil. The fourth and fifth grade chefs enjoyed using mortars and pestles, salad spinners, and wavy knives on a gorgeous sunny autumn day. The sunflowers growing next to the Blueberry sink are on the verge of blooming, so we’ll keep the edible sunflower theme going as our unit continutes!
