Today's activity with the kids was making paper. I was inspired by this post, except the cooking part. First a little treasure hunt in the yard for leaves and petals. They get so excited about that kind of thing. We grabbed a lot of herbs (sniff every herb in the yard to pick the best ones) and bamboo leaves and some rose petals.
Since I hate to buy what I can improvise, I did consider using my new silkscreen kit, which probably would have been fine, but I nixed it in favor of...a zippered pillow cover slipped over a cake cooling rack for my screen. Yeah, too much texture, and it did stain the cover, but this isn't about perfection.
So, blend the paper with water, add some food coloring (oh how they love the magic of food coloring!) and screen over the bathroom sink, while the girls stand on a stool and toss some leaves and bits in with it. This is where they get to have the fun sensory part of it, feeling the pulpy texture, poking some holes in the paper, patting it and feeling the water squeeze out. Flip onto some newspaper, top with more newspaper, stick a heavy weight on top. Press for a while and then uncover and dry in the sun.
See the newspaper creases? Again not about perfection. (That's what I remind myself!) This is the one my 4 year old made, she was a little bummed that her sister got more herbs in her paper, but I think it came out lovely, especially the purple passionflower bits.
3 comments:
Well,the early years are a marathon. Once they start school you'll let yourself slow down a bit. But right now, you don't want to lose your momentum. I was the same.
Just wondering if you know if you are able to use fabric pulp instead of paper pulp when making homemade paper? I've heard of jeans being recyled into paper, but I haven't met anyone who has tried it at home. It kills me to throw away bits of fabric that aren't good enough to use but seem destined for a purpose other than the garbage.
This is such a fantastic idea, it completely turned my day around, see http://petitmorceaudevie.blogspot.com/2006/09/from-grey-to-here.html
if you hadn't commented on my Olive, I might never have known... Thank you!
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