seed shells

I'm still new at this whole gardening thing.  I pretty much toss the seeds in the dirt, water it and hope they start growing.  Since I've had some decent success with this method, I have continued doing it since I started gardening about 4 years ago.  But when things don't quite work out, like the shells clinging for dear life to my delicate little leaves, I have to do a little research.  Most search terms brought up how to remove shells for eating and various sunflower growing websites.  Perseverance paid off and I discovered this nice site suggesting that you can't just "toss those sunflower seeds into the ground...".  I've read about soaking other seeds as well and clearly I will have to research this a bit more.
8 out of 9 sunflowers are popping up. I'll have to transplant them soon, but first, how do I get those shells off without wrecking the fragile little plants.  Google isn't much help in that I haven't been able to find a method for doing so. So I will attempt a few things and post the results:

Well, I put waaaay too much concern into the shells.  I was remembering last year when I tried to take off the shells they ripped the leaves.  Fortunately my girls looooove to water the seeds and sprouts because they get to use a squirt bottle.  We use that because pouring a big bucket of water would just pop the seeds right out of the dirt.  Anyway, they apparently sprayed them so much that it was similar to soaking them because they were somewhat soft and easy to move.  It turns out that standard bathroom equipment, like a pair of tweezers, makes it very easy to grab the little shells and slide off (or pull apart).  So now they're all happy and ready for a transplant.  Although that "nice site" I mentioned before mentions that growing them indoors for too long can make them weaker.  Spring is supposed to be upon us, but as we're expecting 3-7 inches of the white stuff today I don't think it wise to throw them in the ground quite yet.