导语 Janice Sigrist老师是一名资深教育人，曾在美国和中国的多所国际幼儿园担任园长和创始人。在上海生活生活21年的她，于今年7月回美定居。一妍邀请Janice开设一个英文学习专栏，通过Janice的日常故事，激发大家学习英文的兴趣，提升口语能力。
文丨Janice Sigrist
编辑｜第1整理术编辑部
本专栏适合人群：
1）所有英文学习爱好者。
2）希望接受更多沉浸式英语教学体验的爸爸妈妈和小朋友。
3）希望将来为国际家庭、双语家庭提供上门整理服务的职业整理收纳师。
Janice弟弟家院子里的向日葵，还有哪些有趣的故事呢？第1整理术YiOrganizer招募第一个英文学习粉丝群（同时也是Janice粉丝群）。大家可以在群里向Janice建议下一期的故事话题，包括国际教育、美国日常生活，或是任何有关美好生活的问题，统统欢迎。2 准备一段你听Janice讲故事的心得（英文），或提供一个你希望听到的新话题（英文），发送给小助手“苹果老师”微信号（ID：msapple004）。加好友暗号：Janice。3 满足以上两个小伙伴，默认就是Janice的粉丝啦，获得入群机会。群讨论主题：聆听Janice小故事的心得，建议，以及其他希望Janice讲故事的话题方向。拒绝其他话题闲聊。建议尽可能使用英文交流。
Hello. I am Miss Janice, an educator and lover of life! I enjoyed my 21 years in China, my 38 years as an educator, and I am back in the US now sharing my US experiences with you. I hope you are all having a wonderful week, and enjoying new adventures of your own!This week I revisited an activity that my brothers and I did while children with our mother. I harvested sunflower seeds. Not just any normal sunflowers, but special, amazing, unbelievably huge sunflowers. They are still growing and getting taller each day in my brother’s garden, and they are called Mammoth sunflowers. They are supposed to reach up to 12 feet, or 3.66 meters, but ours were so much bigger, and they are still growing!!! Our sunflowers were up over 14 feet, or 4.27 meters tall. Can you imagine that!?!?In the picture, my brother is 6 feet 2 inches tall, or 1.88 meters tall. You can see him next to the sunflowers earlier this summer as they were still growing!!!! He looks like a midget!Our sunflower heads started to wilt downward, and this meant that they were ready for us to harvest their seeds. We cut off the head of the sunflower. It was bigger than my own head!!!! I took the head and gently rubbed off the outer yellow flowers with my fingers, and it came off quickly and easily. The flowers were so soft. THEN I was ready to start rubbing the seeds, and that became more difficult.It took me almost an hour to rub out all of the seeds. It became more difficult as I got closer towards the center of the head; around the outside, the edges, it was much easier to remove the seeds. I put the seeds onto a large baking sheet, so that I could actually see how many seeds I had—and that was a LOT! If I had been in China, I would have asked the kids to count the seeds, to group them by 5’s, 10’s, then 100’s, and tally up the final number for you; we would have also planted seeds to grow our own sun flowers—but, I was not, and so I do not know how many seeds there were. My guess would be thousands!Next, I put the seeds into a large pan, about a cup at a time, and added 2 tablespoons of salt for each quart of water and each cup of seeds. In the picture, the larger spoon is the tablespoon. A quart of water is .95 liters, and you can easily just use a liter instead! I brought the pan to a boil, turned down my heat, let it simmer for 15 minutes. Next I removed the seeds from the water, dried them, then put them on a baking sheet and roasted them for 10 to 15 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, or 200 degrees Celsius. If you are making these at home, pay really close attention to the seeds at the 10 minute mark, as they begin to brown very quickly. Don’t let them burn! Yuck!!!When they were ready, I removed them from the oven, let them cool off, and then enjoyed the seeds! This would be a fun activity to do as a family, or with a group of friends. We did this several times with our mom, and it remains a wonderful memory! I love discovering and in this case, rediscovering nature! Think of all of the great memories you could create with your own family or friends!Enjoy the fun!!!! Thank you for joining me today. I wish you all a wonderful week, great new adventures, and I welcome you to join my future adventures. ☺ Bye, bye!未来跟着Janice老师学英文专栏会在喜马拉雅APP同步更新。欢迎移步订阅。
