Sunflowers

Our unit right now is that there are changes and cycles in nature. After weather, seasons and oak trees, we come to the sunflower. I adore this book Sunflower House by Eve Bunting -it relates how flowers grow with the seasons.
It is about a boy who plants sunflower seeds in a circle. As the sunflowers grow, they create a clubhouse for the boy and his friends. Until one day, when they start bend and the petals start falling off. The children in the story decide to harvest the seeds and grow a new "sunflower house" the next Spring. Then we used a Mailbox Magazine activity where the steps in the sunflower life cycle are on the petals and when put in order form a sunflower. When we wrote steps for how to grow a sunflower, the class was sure to add "take seeds from the dead flower to grow more sunfowers".

What are some of your favorite books to read with life cycles?
Jenn