Recycling Paper

Look at these adorable kindergarten scientists.  They are very excited and ready for one of the highlights of our short school week…recycling paper!  As part of our Materials in Our World unit of study, we have been learning about paper.  This activity teaches our young scientists how to recycle, which means to make something new out of something old.  

In order for us to make new paper, we needed to make paper pulp.  We did this by taking clean toilet tissue and tearing it up into many, many small pieces.  The smaller the better!  Then we put all of the paper pieces into a small plastic jar.

   

   

   

Next, we had to add water to the bottles of paper.  In order to create paper pulp, we add the water and shake the bottles up to break down the old paper.

   

Then the scientists got back to work shaking the bottles of torn up paper and water.  It looked like this would be easy for us to do…but it really wasn't.  It took a long time!

   

   

   

When the pulp was ready, we used screens to separate the pulp and the water.  The pulp was really wet and we had to work hard to squeeze out the water.  We used our hands and a second screen to get as much water out of the pulp as we could!

   

   

   

We learned earlier in our unit that newsprint is really absorbent.  We carefully peeled the newly recycled paper off the screen and placed it on a section of newspaper.  Then we used the plastic bottle like a rolling pin to squeeze out even more water!

   

When we were done, we put our new paper on a piece of wax paper to dry overnight.  We brought it home the next day.

This was such a fun learning activity for these scientists.  I would like to thank the families that sent in extra newspapers so we had enough for everyone to use during the activity.  Also, special thanks to Mrs. Grittner, who ALWAYS helps us out by getting materials ready, taking photos and just helping however she can.  And a big thanks to Ms. Laura Sampers, our OT, for lending a hand as well.  Next week we will begin investigating a new material…fabric!