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!

Paper and Water

So, what happens when you put water on to paper?  We decided to find out.  We  chose 4 types of paper…cardboard, newsprint, wax paper and paper towel.  We made some predictions about what would happen to each one if we placed water on the paper sample with an eye dropper.

We learned some important science vocabulary words today…absorb and repel.  We predicted what we thought would happen to each paper sample if we added water to it.  Would the paper absorb the water or repel it?  Time to find out!  We started with the cardboard and newsprint samples first...

   

   

…the cardboard samples repelled the water, at least initially.  The newsprint absorbed it immediately.  Then we tried the wax paper and paper towel...

   

   

…the paper towel absorbed the water quickly and the wax paper repelled the water.  Some of our predictions were correct and some were not.  A fun activity!

Materials in Our World: Paper

We started exploring a new material this week…paper.  We started out by simply observing several different types of paper:  cardboard, chip board, tag board, construction paper, newsprint, brown craft paper, wax paper and paper towel.  Like all good scientists, we made many observations!

   

   

   

We were surprised to learn that there are so many different types of paper.  We tried figuring out what each type of paper would be used for, too.  We are excited to learn more in the next few days!

A Visit from Mrs. Putz's First Graders!

On Tuesday, we had a visit from Mrs. Putz's First Graders.  They recently completed their unit of study on the author Jan Brett.  For their culminating project, they wrote their own versions of the Jan Brett book The Gingerbread Baby.  They came and shared their amazing stories and illustrations with our kindergartners!

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

This was such a great experience!  It was fun for me to see some of my former kindergarten friends and to see how far they have come since leaving kindergarten.  It was also great for the current kindergartners to see something they might get to do next year.  Thank you Mrs. Putz and your first graders.  Their work was great and we loved the stories!

Art Adventure

During this past week, we had the pleasure of having a special visitor in our classroom two times.  Mrs. Heather Knapp was our Art Adventure volunteer.  Art Adventure is a program put on by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Northview PTO makes it possible for the volunteers to attend the training. This program trains volunteers to go out into the school to give our students exposure to all the wonderful pieces of art at the institute.  The theme for our pieces was "Celebrate Life".  We definitely learned lots from these visits!

   

   

   

   

We truly enjoyed this program and are so grateful to Mrs. Knapp for spending time in our room and teaching us.  Many thanks to the Northview PTO for making this possible for our students!  Check your child's Friday Folder for more information on  FREE events at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.