Sates of Matter

So for the last few weeks Orin class has been study about States of Matter during their Science class. I had no idea 1st graders learned that kind of stuff but he's really enjoyed it. His teacher does a great job making things fun and last week they took a field trip to try to solidify the ideas in their little minds.

First we went to a sliver factory. They take the sliver nuggets, melt them down, reshape them into something beautiful and then sell them. The kids were totally into it.

Little M learning too.

This woman spoke English pretty well (better than most) but I think the kids missed a lotm so Mrs. Michelle rephrased most of what she said.

Orin was so intrigued by this woman washing this silver bowl. He kept waiting to see what she was going to do with it. Unfortunately, she just washed it for the entire 20 minutes we were out there.

This woman was hammering pictures of animals into her small sliver bowl. The kids were mesmerized.

When we went into the store we realized why that woman was washing the bowl for so long. We found a similar bowl inside for over 180,000 Bhat! (almost $6,000)

After the sliver factory we went to Sa Paper Factory. Here Mrs. Michelle is giving them strict instructions on how to act as we walk the busy, yet narrow street to the factory.

The kids did great.

We made it!

So I learned a lot about making the paper. Sa paper is pretty cool because they don't have to cut down the tree to make the paper - and taking the bark off doesn't kill it - the tree will just grow more. The first step is to boil the bark to soften it. They will also boil it with the dye so the color gets mixed in really well.

Then these women take the softened bark, after it's been boiled for about 3 hours and peel of the "meat." That is what gets turned into the paper.

Then the "meat" is mixed in these machines until the flakes rise to the surface. Here they are making white paper.

Then someone takes one of these screens, dips it into a huge tub of this mixture, and the flakes cling to the screen in a thin layer.

Then the screens are laid out in the sun to dry - it takes about 2 hours.

The kids were wondering where the paper was?

They actually dry it with the paper on the bottom - so that the color doesn't get bleached by the sun. I liked the green paper reflecting on the grass.

If they want to make this a better quality, and more expensive (although not much) paper, someone takes a bowl like object and runs it over the dry paper to make it smooth. For some reason the kids thought this was so cool.

There was quite a bit of down time because the workers only spoke Thai. So first they telling us about the paper in Tha, and then some of the moms would translate for Mrs. Michelle and then Mrs. Michelle would tell the kids. Here the boys had gotten rocks and were hitting them together to make sparks while they waited.

And the last step is to peel the paper off of the screen. Pretty cool!