More Cotton!

A couple months ago, I posted about a cotton project we did where we harvested the cotton from our school garden, deseeded it, and learned all about the cotton process.

Well, our awesome garden educator Mrs. Breed-Parks came up with this fantastic idea of actually using the cotton we picked and making something out of it!  She decided we could make paper out of the cotton, and then create ornaments (for the ECC's craft fair) from the paper.  I thought this was a terrific idea, because it would show the students how cotton comes full circle from plant to product.

So we blocked a couple days this last week before winter break to partner up with Mrs. Breed-Parks and our art teacher Mrs. Schepker-Mueller to whip up some handmade cotton paper.  For those who are wondering, here's the steps we took to create our paper:

1. You pick the cotton from the plant.
2. You pull the cotton from the burr so you just have the cotton boll.
3. You then de-seed the cotton and pick all the "trash" (leaves, etc...) out of the cotton so you have clean cotton.  The seeds you keep separate so you can replant them and grow more cotton plants next year!
4. Once you have the clean cotton, you have to wisp it--you pull it apart into tiny wisps.
5. When you have your wisps made, then you use scissors to cut the wisps into even smaller parts.
6. You then cut up colored paper (depending on what color paper you want to make) into tiny squares: this is used as filler for your cotton paper you will make.
7. You then put your cut up cotton wisps, colored paper, a little corn starch mixture, and water into a blender (you can add flower seeds to the mixture as well too--that way, once you're done with your paper ornament, you can actually plant your ornament in your yard and flowers will grow!).
8. You blend the mixture up (adding more water so it's like the consistency of a smoothie) for about a minute until it's all the same consistency.
9. You then pour the paper mixture out on a screen and press out all of the water as you're smoothing out your paper onto the screen.
10. You let it dry for a day and then your paper is ready to be made into whatever you want to craft it into...like an ornament!  You can decorate it with paint, markers, colored paper, glitter, whatever you want!

The students really had a great time learning about the paper making process (and seeing the cotton that they picked come full circle into a product).  They made some really cool ornaments from this paper that really show their creativity.

Check out the pics below for the whole cotton paper making process and the products they produced!  Enjoy!

Cotton!

In social studies we decided to do a mini-unit (3 days only!) on cotton since our awesome garden here at MRH has cotton!  We partnered up with our awesome gardener Mrs. Breed-Parks and we learned a lot about cotton: where it comes from, how to pick and harvest it, and what can be done with after it's been picked.  Cotton was a huge industry during the colonial era--done mostly by slaves, but others (from all different races) throughout the US (and well into the 20th century) picked cotton as well.

We started our mini Cotton unit off with a view from Mr. Dan.  Mr. Dan is one of our awesome bus drivers/buildings and grounds guru here at MRH, and along with fighting in the Vietnam War, he also picked cotton on a farm when he was a boy!  Check out his story below:

After hearing from Mr. Dan and his experiences, students set out in groups to read about all of the uses and production capabilities for cotton.  We then headed out into the garden to actually look at how our cotton here was growing and then we got to pick it and de-seed it.

We then headed back inside to actually pick out the seeds of the cotton (which hasn't been done for many centuries, thanks to the invention of the cotton gin in the late 1700s).  Students really liked finding all of the seeds in the fluffy cotton--we are saving the seeds to plant more cotton next spring!

Overall it was a great mini-unit for the students.  I think a lot of them thought cotton picking was only done by slaves--and although a good portion of it was--it was actually done by people of all races and ethnicities.  We briefly touched on slavery in our American Revolution unit, and we'll circle back to it again in our Civil War unit as well.  This was just a great opportunity for students to get to hear from a real-life cotton picker and see what cotton looks like and how it's picked in person.