Creating Recycled Paper with Preschoolers

Week three of the Let’s Be Superheroes preschool theme from Experience Curriculum is Saving The Planet. It covers topics like practicing earth-friendly habits, creating upcycled art and making paper and reducing, reusing, recycling, and protecting. This activity is about creating recycled paper with preschoolers, providing hands-on experience about the process of reducing, reusing, and recycling.

How can preschoolers save the plant? By teaching them at a young age how to take care of and respect our environment.

Environmental education helps children connect to the world around them by teaching them how they can make a difference through their actions.

Experience Curriculum

Creating Recycled Paper With Preschoolers

One of our recycling activities for Lesson 13 “Recycle” was to create recycled paper. I gave everyone some pieces of colored paper, and a shallow bowl of water on a tray.

I encouraged them to experiment with tearing up the paper and putting it into the water.

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We noticed the water changed color and although the paper became wet and mushy, it didn’t dissolve enough for us processing it by hand.

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So I decided to bring out the blender. This wasn’t a fail – it was all about experimentation to see what works! I figured we would need to use the blender but in the meantime, everyone was engaged in ripping paper and putting it into the water.

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The paper blended easily in my Ninja blender with a little bit of water. The kids were thrilled to see the results and feel the mixture.

Environmental education such as learning about the 3 Rs helps children understand that their actions matter and encourages them to participate in earth-friendly practices.

Experience Curriculum

The next step is to spread the wet paper on a screen to dry. I didn’t have a small screen so I tried a cooling rack. Nope didn’t work. So I found a window screen in the basement. I figured it would wash off and it did.

We mixed small amounts at a time. Each mixture (of different colors of paper shown above) were turning out green. To change up the colors, I added some construction paper. So here’s a very red mixture of red recycled paper.

Our paper dried overnight outdoors on the screen. I carefully peeled it off the screen but some of it was thinner than others.

The colors turned out great! You can see smaller flecks of the other other colors we blended together.

Collaging with Recycled Paper

After our paper dried, we needed to decide what to do with it. One little guy kept saying, “I want to eat some!” Well, I reminded him it was paper, we mixed it with water and blended it. Did he really want to eat it? He decided no, but I understand it was the new texture that intrigued him!

We decided to tear up the colored recycled paper and make collages with it.

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The collages were colorful and fun way to save our recycled paper.

Questions to ask:

• Did the child discuss the different states of the paper went through during the process?
• What descriptive words did he use as he created the “recycled” paper?”

We made recycled paper!

More Earth-Friendly Activities

• Superheroes Take Care of the Earth
• Earth Day Printable
• Recycled Water Wall
• 20 Egg Carton Crafts
• Our Favorite Planet Earth