School-Age: Pulp Paper

The last program of our summer was about pulp paper!


1. Reading
I read the book "5 Little Ducks" by Denise Fleming. Since the book was a play off the popular children's song, I felt the topic and the book fit perfectly in with this year's CSLP theme of "Libraries Rock".

I did not sing the song but I did have the kids quack every time Papa duck called out in the book.

2. Discussion
Since pulp paper is a bit more of a time-intensive craft, I wanted to keep the discussion short. I defined pulp paper for the kids and asked them what was special about the art-work in the book. This was new information to me until I began researching for this program, but Denise Fleming made her artwork out of pulp paper! How neat!

I went over several ways they could make pulp paper. One of which uses any recycled paper materials. You wet them down, put them in a blender or food processor, squeeze excess liquid out of the paper, and then create with them.

Since my husband was less than enthused with me taking our blender into the library for a paper craft, I went with the second way to make pulp paper using tissue paper. I had to make sure that the tissue paper did not bleed (even if it is not labeled 'bleeding art', some tissue paper will still bleed colors). You rip the tissue paper into small pieces, wet it down, tear it up even more, and then create with the small pieces of tissue paper.


3. Craft
For the craft we had tables laid out with newspaper. I gave each child their own plastic cup with a small amount of water in it. They also were given a cookie cutter as their mold as well as a paper plate to put their mold on to take home. Since their paper will take awhile to dry, I wanted the craft to be portable for the ride home.

The tables had tissue paper that had already been cut up into small squares. The kids were to tear up the paper and go to town.

Here's some examples of mine:

My first attempt (discovering some left-over tissue paper we had in our supplies all bled!):

The heart after drying and out of its mold:

A second example with a new batch of tissue paper:

Notes:

This program went very well! We only had the program on one day this week since the month ended on a Tuesday and we had tons of kids at the program! Normally, the earlier in the week program is lucky to have 10-15 attendees (including parents) but we had over 40! It was a good thing I had prepared extra stuff and had extra tables! We needed it and we needed everything to run somewhat smoothly! SRP ended on a great note and boy am I glad for a break after a SUPER busy summer!!!