Art Club Origami

We have started clubs the 3rd quarter, and my club is art!  Big surprise there! :)  For our first project, we've been working on these amazing origami sculptures.  I used to do these in 5th grade when I taught elementary art, but it was a tad difficult for that age.  6-8 grade level is perfect for it.  We started by making the cube, which uses 6 of the same unit folds.  It was a review for many of them, since I taught at two of the feeder schools for this middle school, so that was pretty neat.  Some of them were able to help the others who had never done the cube before, and we were able to quickly move on to our 12 piece sculptures.

Paper sculpture

The last few days before Christmas break, my students worked on these gorgeous paper sculptures.  Each grade level did something different, but all were required to create a three dimensional sculpture with paper.  As much as I'd like to give my students a little more freedom, I honestly end up with not much of anything, simply because they just don't know what to create! So we save that for free draw time when they are finished with projects.  In the meantime, I teach them step by step for most of our projects, and when they finish, they're often inspired to create a variation of something they've learned.  For example, my 6th grades created these amazing cone paper sculptures in all white, and a few students that finished early made a smaller sculpture in different shapes and/or colors.  

My 7th graders got a little taste of quilling with these paper snowflakes. 

These looked so pretty stacked up as I was on my way to the display case!

My 8th graders worked on an origami style sculpture, I'll put those in my next post!

Fox Box Instructions

I posted the fox boxes at the end of last year and had someone ask for the instructions, so here they are!  I hope you can make sense of the pictures, sometimes its difficult to see the folds in photographs!

Start with three squares, I used 6 inch squares for my fox box.  

Fold one square in half on the diagonal.

Then fold in half again, and unfold, leaving a guide fold.

Fold each bottom corner up to the top corner, lining the edge up with the guide fold crease, forming a diamond.  These will become the fox's ears.

Rotate the unit around and fold up the inside layer of paper to make the fox's nose. 

Repeat these steps with the remaining two squares...

To assemble, turn the fox faces all toward the center, with the back of the heads all turned out, and remember that the mouths eat the ears!  Insert both ears of one fox into the mouth of another...

Then slide them together as far as they will go...

Carefully put the ears of the last fox into the mouth of the partially assembled piece... that leaves a set of ears and a mouth....

Insert the last set of ears into the only remaining "mouth."

Wiggle the pieces together, trying to close up the opening on each side where all the colors come together.  Now you're finished! :)  Sometimes if students finish early, I allow them to challenge themselves by making a smaller box, and then smaller, to see how small they can make one!  Have fun!

More origami!

It's the time of year when students are beginning to get burned out on school, and teachers are too!  So I try to save my origami specifically for this time of year to keep them interested.  They love doing origami, so I like to include a little of it each year.

5th grade begins a series of origami models that use the same unit fold.  It's neat because when they learn the unit fold, they can make up to three different models!  Two are shown below, the cube and the multiplex challenge, which is the hardest with 12 pieces of paper! 

Making the unit folds....

 LOTS of unit folds!!

 Third grade makes "fox boxes"  They get the name from the unit folds.  Before they are put together, each piece looks like a fox face!

Hawaiian Shirt Origami!

I have lots of Origami lesson plans, but few are really appropriate for younger grades.  These Hawaiian shirts are just the right level for 2nd grade!  They loved making these.  We decorated them with construction paper crayons when we finished the folding.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of the students' finished shirts!  They were too excited to take them home the day we made them!  I just couldn't disappoint! :)