Guest Blog - Origami for toddlers.

A guest blog from a good friend of mine, originally from Japan...

I am very thrilled to be asked to write a guest blog here. I am from Japan and I have a son and a daughter. As a mum, I sometimes struggle to think of things to do, especially on rainy/lazy days. I try to keep my children occupied instead of letting them watch DVDs all day long. They love anything from cooking, baking, drawing, painting, handy-crafts to model making.

One of our favourite activities is making something with Origami - the traditional Japanese paper craft. I have this rather cute little carry case I bought in Japan, clearly saying ‘Origami Case’ in Japanese just in case you didn’t know.  As suggested, I keep my Origami paper in there.  Origami literally means ‘folding paper’.  

Origami carry case.

We decided to make two very easy animals on this occasion. The first one is a cat.

Here are the instructions:

1. Get a piece of Origami paper    

(Just any square paper is fine)     

2. Fold it to make a triangle.

        

 3. Fold the top outwards.

          

4. Fold the bottom two corners upwards.

5. Turn it over and draw a face, Meow!

                     

      

         

        

The next one is a dog.

                                                     

1.Get a piece of Origami paper.    

2. Make a triangle facing downwards.

3. Fold two corners downwards.

4. Turn over and fold two triangles top and bottom

 

5. Turn over again and draw a face.

These are very popular with children and you can make greeting cards, gift tags bookmarks etc

with different colours, sizes and faces of the animals. There are a lot of things you can make with Origami and it is actually quite easy and it keeps those little fingers busy.

 

Here are the finished works with my children proudly holding them. Just give it a go!

NB sorry about the formatting!