This month we've been focusing on the environment, specifically how to care for our planet by renewing, reusing and recycling. We've done (and still have in the works!) several really fun activities to support what we are learning. We've picked up litter around our campus as a tie-in between our citizenship and our environment units (click here for more about that project), we've used our TapIt to complete an interactive activity on sorting recyclable materials and participated in a science experiment to illustrate the effects of oil spills on ocean wildlife.
Today we had some special visitors from a nearby school district who were able to join us for a science lesson about reusing different items around the house. As part of this lesson, we got our hands dirty, making our own new paper from used papers found in our classroom recycling bin.
We found all of the necessary materials around the school and prepared our experiment.
Yours truly presented a lesson that explored different ways to reuse household items including old clothing toys, and plastic bags (pardon the dark images, we had our lights off!)
We got to work... first developing the hypothesis that, yes, we would be able to make our own paper, Next, we tested our hypothesis by following six simple steps.
The students followed each step, mixing water and shredded paper, then creating a pulp using the blender.
They took turns spreading the pulp out across a mesh screen. They made the best faces when they tried touching the pulp mixture! Talk about a sensory experience!
When we were done spreading out the pulp, the kids covered it with newspaper then flipped it upside down in order to remove the screen. We were left with flattened pulp that we will let dry overnight.
Tomorrow we'll test out our hypothesis and see if we have a future in paper-making!
Special thanks to our guests today for joining us and helping out with photography...
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