Sunflower Seeds Time-lapse

Students are learning about living things. To determine if something is living or non-living, we have been asking some questions:

Does it move all by itself?
Does it grow and change?
Does it breathe or need air?
Does it need food and water to survive?
Does it reproduce (make more of itself)?

When sunflower plants began to sprout in our snail terrarium we realized that the children must have accidentally dropped some seeds (from our bird feeder project) into the soil. We watched in wonder at how quickly the plants began to grow.

We used the questions above to discuss whether the sunflowers in our classroom were living or non living. There was some debate as to whether the sunflowers met the first criterion - Does it move all by itself? We decided to conduct an experiment to test this.

We recorded the sunflower plants and then created a time-lapse video. The results are amazing! Students could clearly see the sunflower plants moving and reaching for the sun. We could see the leaves opening up, and the roots moving and growing.

Students agreed that, yes, sunflowers are living things. They can move all by themselves!