Say “origami” and most people picture birds, fish, or frogs made of sharply creased paper, an amusing exercise for children. Origami has long been appreciated as a beautiful form of art.
The teachers find that paper folding is a motivating activity for the students. They also can find that they can use origami to develop Maths lessons especially in geometry. Some of them would not dream of teaching a geometry unit without some paper folding. There are some very obvious applications such as:
1. Polygons – triangles, rhombus, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, etc.
2. Angle Properties – eg. 180 degrees in a triangle, trisection, etc.
3. Polyhedra – cube, rectangular prism, tetrahedron, octagon, etc.
4. Symmetry.
Yesterday we had an Open Door Day in our school and we made some pieces of origami like Magic Circle, Fireworks, Ninja Stars with 2 square papers and Silvana's Star Ball.
Making little origami circles was a good way to practice our skills without having to get too intricate with folding. We can easily make the origami magic circles.
Making little origami circles was a good way to practice our skills without having to get too intricate with folding. We can easily make the origami magic circles.
The magic circle is an example of modular origami, in which you fold multiple pieces of paper into modules then join them to make your object. Origami symmetrical circles are great to use for a table centerpiece or as decorations on a wrapped gift.
To prepare Silvana's Star Ball we needed 30 pieces of paper. It appeared that it was very easy to fold, but the assembly was difficult. Finally Karolina did it !
