Recycling Paper

One of the most fun science investigations we do all year in Kindergarten is Recycling Paper.  It takes a lot of hard work and listening to do this investigation correctly.  Luckily, there are great scientists in this class and they did an amazing job of listening and following directions!

We began by taking some single ply toilet tissue and tearing it into tiny pieces.  We placed the pieces in a small plastic bottle.  Next we added some water to the bottle and placed the lid on tightly.  Then we shook the bottles for about five minutes.  That was hard work!

   

   

This part of the investigation helped us create paper pulp, which is the name of the substance we now had in our bottles after shaking them.  We placed a screen on top of a plastic cup and emptied the contents of the jar onto the screen.  The excess water drained in to the cup below.

Next we placed a second screen on top of the paper pulp, squeezed the screens together and used a sponge to blot off the excess water.  The sponges worked great because they absorb water!

   

Our next step was to remove the screens and pulp from the top of the cups and place them on some newspaper.  We learned on Tuesday that newsprint floats so we thought it would be absorbent.  It was! We blotted the screens and the pulp as hard as we could to get all the extra water out of it!

   

 We took the top screen off and used our plastic bottle as a rolling pin to smooth out the recycled paper and squeeze out any last bits of water.  Finally, we carefully peeled the recycled paper off of the screen and placed it on wax paper to dry over night.

   

We really loved doing this investigation.  After spring break, we will be learning about fabric!