Paper Making

Having spent the last week talking about rubbish and recycling, we finished of by making our own recycled paper. I don't think the children really believed me that we would actually manage to make new paper, ok the end result is very rough paper but hopefully they will be happy when they see it on Monday. We stared out with a selection of paper, a newspaper, kitchen paper and coloured tissue paper

The children ripped the paper into small piece.

We then put roughly a cup of paper and a cup of water in the blender

and then blended it until we got a fine pulp.

We then added another cup of paper and water and some coloured tissue paper to dye the paper with.

We then tipped the contents into a large bowl, the children explored the strange texture, you might need to add another cup of water, just so you have enough mixture to cover the mesh.

We then took our mesh frame, an embroidery hoop and some net curtain stretched across it.

The hoop is then dipped into the mixture, making sure the pulp covers all the mesh,

then lift it carefully and allow the water to drain away.

We then left them on a towel to dry, after an hour, I carefully removed the hoop.

It did take over 24 hours for the paper to dry, so not a quick activity.