Wednesday, March 30, 2011

recycled sea turtles

I love doing paper-making activities with my kids to teach them about recycling and repurposing "unwanted" scraps. This also comes with a heavy (messy) price, but my kids have fun nonetheless!Materials needed: Light green and dark green paper pulp for each table/group *I added glue to the pulp also* Glad Cling Wrap Paper Bowls LOTS of paper towels! Paper, eyeballs, background for Day 2. I gave each child a paper bowl and some Glad Cling Wrap (trust me!). They turned the bowl over and wrapped the bowl with plastic wrap. They then used their hands to scoop out paper pulp and put it on the top and side of their bowl. Water was running everywhere, but my second graders had a BLAST! We used sponges to soak out the excess water and allowed them to dry in the sun for 5-7 days.
On Day 2 we popped the bowl out, carefully took off the plastic wrap, and made them look more like sea turtles. I gave each of them a blue piece of paper to create a "habitat" for the turtle to swim in. *Honestly this "habitat" isn't the greatest, but it was the ONLY picture I remembered to take!
A fun take on papermaking, and a "different" method of creating sculpture!

5 comments:

  1. deborah, i mix paper scraps and water in a blender. for this i added some glue to it to make the shell "stiff". the pulp is like watery toilet paper, if that makes any sense!

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  2. I really like this idea. Did you have the paper pulp ready ahead of time or did the kids help?

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  3. This looks like a great idea! I'm going to try it!

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  4. AT first I thought you were making guacamole! (hee hee) I love paper making!

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