Paper and Water Revisited

On Monday we began an exploration of paper and water.  Today, we revisited this work.  We observed what some of the papers from Monday looked like after soaking, added new materials and tools to our work, and Audrey made some soup with her paper, water, and ribbon.  Giacomo and Tegan also engaged in a discussion about the composition of paper. 

“Do you have your dropper?” - Saul, 3.5 years
I do. - Elyse
“Can I have my dropper too?” - Saul 
“Today I’m going to use my dropper too ‘cause I like dropping things of water.” - Saul 
“Can I have a drop[per]?” - Audrey, 3.10 years

Giacomo describes the water cycle for us after observing that some of his water has disappeared from the container. 

“Oh, it just went in the sky.” - Giacomo, 4.1 years
How did it do that? 
“Well, you know, when water stays in a place for a really long day or really long time like a few minutes or like night and morning, it then like kind of goes up.  And when it goes up, it rains and goes into the ground, and then it goes into a lake or a pool or anything that has a lot of water, and then it goes up again, and then it rains down the grain again.  Then it flows into water and rains into water and then goes into um..” - Giacomo, 4.1 years

“You know what I’m doing? I’m making paper a little bit soggy., and then I’m going to use my dropper to drop some more water.” - Saul, 3.5 years

“No. I’m putting more water in here so it will really absorb.”- Saul

Saul was using vocabulary from our conversations and his conversation with mom, Naama. 

What are the ingredients in paper?

This paper right here is watercolor paper that I watercolored on, and it’s not falling apart at all. 

“Because it needs more time to get apart.  It needs more time than other paper to get apart. Because watercolor paper has more heaviness inside of it, and the heaviness is more like likeness inside that.  But heaviness makes it harder.  So that’s why it takes more time to come apart. Yeah, because heavy like stone makes it more hard because stone Is hard in paper, and that’s how it takes days to come apart.” - Giacomo

Giacomo, do you think there are stones in our paper? 

“No, it’s tiny stones, but inside the tiny stones are meteor stones, and the meteor stones are big stones.” -Giacomo

“Trees make p aper! They just come from trees.” - Giacomo


Are all of the papers made from the same ingredients? - Sarah, Audrey's mom 

“No.” - Audrey 

“I think that watercolor paper doesn’t get crushed down so easily because they made it thicker because watercolors are very watery.  If you try to paint with watercolors on plain paper it might fall apart.” - Tegan, 7.4 years

I’m wondering if we can find out what the ingredient is that makes it thicker and heavier.

“Mostly just the chemicals and some other things. Well, there’s a lot of paper that has a lot of different things. Fire paper. Book paper which is on books. Oh, and picture paper, which is on pictures. And head paper, which is on heads. And lots of other papers.  We have a lot of kinds.  Normal paper, and different types of like watercolor paper.  We have a lot of papers.  We have like five billion things in our attic.” - Giacomo​

Noodle [paper and ribbon] Soup

“Rainbow colored ribbon.” - Audrey, 3.10 years

Audrey’s making soup. - Sarah, mom 

“This is the noddle [yellow string[ and this is the broth.” - Audrey

Audrey, what did it [water] change into? - Sarah 

“Broth.” - Audrey
​
She’s putting her soup in the refrigerator. - Sarah

Disintegration

“Elyse, maybe it would take like five million days to make it apart.  Five million days is how long it needs for all of it to be destroyed into small pieces.” - Giacomo 
That’s a long time. - Elyse
“Well, it will actually take ten days.” - Giacomo
This paper right here is watercolor paper that I watercolored on, and it’s not falling apart at all. - Elyse
“Because it needs more time to get apart.  It needs more time than other paper to get apart.” - Giacomo