I Ate Sunshine For Breakfast

Published by Flying Eye Books. Authored by Michael Holland FLS. Illustrated by Philip Giordano.

Recommended for: Year 4.

Suggested length of study: 4 weeks.

Enter the incredible world of plants to learn about the green machines of the natural world. Using just the sun's rays, trees and flowers helps create everything from rubber to honey. Find out the powerful science going on in every leaf, petal and stem with vibrant illustrations that will make you look at plants in a new way. From expert ecologist and educator Michael Holland, this illustrated compendium celebrates the plants in your life, from minty toothpaste to the floral names in your classroom. This comprehensive guide covers everything from the parts of a plant through to conservation and also features DIY projects for young gardeners.

Why choose this book? Lessons and resources

Why choose this book?

This beautifully illustrated book combines fascinating facts about plants with practical plant DIY projects. It was chosen for Year 4 as it will build upon the learning from the Year 3 science programme of study and develop a deepening interest and understanding of how plants shape our world and how humans have harnessed the power of plants in so many ways. The book combines distinctive illustrations with well-written text. Michael Holland uses scientific language whilst retaining an appealing and accessible tone, making this a wonderful non-fiction book to explore with children. This book is packed full of fascinating information, so we don’t suggest that you read the entire book to teach the sequence. However, we recommend that you make sure that copies are available for children to revisit the pages you have read together and explore pages that interest them, independently.

This book could be revisited in year 5 as it presents opportunities for reinforcing science content for this year group.

Text potential

This diagram gives an overview of the potential for teaching offered in this text. If you teach the entire sequence, you will cover these aspects. We advise teachers to produce their own text potential diagrams as this helps them to get to know the books well. Our Getting Started with Take One Book course for new schools has a module about Text Potential.

Links to National Curriculum in England

Living things and their habitats

Pupils should be taught to:

recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways
explore and use classification keys to help group, identify and name a variety of living things in their local and wider environment
recognise that environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things

Curriculum connections

Science
- plants