Making paper out of paper!

It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring, He went to bed and he bumped his head and he couldn’t get up in the morning!

We sang this song yesterday and today it was the same kind of weather. We also sang “Rain, rain go away, come again another day”. On our chart it said, cloudy today because when we did it, it was not raining. Maybe we should check the weather throughout the day, like the weatherman on television as it changes so often. We placed all the words and numbers in their correct places on our chart this morning and Renshi had a huge smile on his face, when Shelley started singing the song “Sunday, Monday……..” He found the word “Thursday” and recognized that both Thursday and Tuesday start with the “t” sound.

We sang our “Hello” song as well and while we were having free play time, Shelley asked us to come and stand at one of the activity tables as she had something to show us. Over the last few months we have used the paper shredder a lot. In a large tub there was some shredded paper but it felt different. We touched the paper in the shredder and then we touched the paper in the tub. The one in the shredder was dry and the one in the tub was cold. There was some water in the tub too. We had turns to pour more water into the tub and then Shelley used a blender to mush everything together like soup. Our next job was to hold the thin cloth over a bucket and we poured the mixture into it. When we listened carefully, we could hear the water dripping out; we then spread it onto a piece of newspaper which was on a flat board. We placed more newspaper over the muslin and then a wooden board. We walked on the board and sang a song about squeezing the water; we jumped on the board and sang another song about squeezing the water out. The final thing that we did was sprinkle glitter on the paper and we will now have to wait many days for it to dry and then we will see what our paper looks like. It is funny to think that we made paper from paper!

You can see from all of these photos the different stages that we worked through to eventually make a sheet of paper. We were surprised to see that when all of the colours mixed together, they made a brownish colour. We are not sure why that happened when we used so many colours. Maybe now we will know that when you mix all of the colours together you will get brown.

During the rest of the day we did another activity at the tables which required us to colour, cut, design and paste. We cut out small rectangles, a large rectangle and a circle. Renshi made a car with some of his pieces and Finn made a sun with some of his. We pasted them directly into our portfolios. We did exercises using a stretch band. We stood on the band and then pulled the sides with our hands. We also lay on the mat and put the band around our feet and pushed it. Then Shelley leaned on us and we pushed her so that she didn’t squash us. We were trying to strengthen the muscles in our legs and learn how to use our large muscles. There was another new fun activity with bubble plastic. We each stood on a piece and marched on it, jumped on it and stamped on it. We were hoping that there would be a popping sound, but it never worked. Only some of the bubbles popped but not all of them. We took our shoes off when we played this game and felt the difference between being on the mat and being on the plastic on the floor. Shelley took a book out about manners to read to us but our activity with the cutting, colouring and pasting took such a long time, we didn’t have time to listen to it. Nico spent some time in the library. He has a group of books that are his favourites and he also likes to put the covers down on the shelves, so that we can see books on display.

Tomorrow we are going to do baking and have a little party for Darren’s birthday. Shelley will be downstairs with a mum and her little boy, starting the “Me and My Mom” programme. It is a trial lesson.

Enjoy the afternoon and stay warm.

Love

Shelley and Darren