Van Gogh's Sunflowers

• Van Gogh painted sunflowers over and over again, strying to work out exactly the right composition, colors, lighting, etc. As Spring began, the pre-K  followed the famous painter's lead. 
• In our discussions we talked about the difference between the reason why people like flowers (they're pretty/they smell nice) and the reason they exist in nature. Students used their knowledge of plants, their parts (leaves, roots, stems, etc.) and what they need to live. We watched timelapse video of a flower blooming, wilting and subsequently bearing fruit, learning that the purpose of the flower is to attract pollinators to create seeds to grow new plants. 
• To create our paintings we had to use two different kinds of symmetry: bilateral and radial. Students cut out symmetrical vases for their flowers by folding a piece of paper in half. The petals around the flower on the other hand had to display radial symmetry (symmetry not only of one side to the other but of all sides).