Topics in STEAM: Origami

Origami isn't one of our enduring passions, but it IS super fun, and I'm always stoked whenever something randomly reminds me that, "Hey! We like origami! I should get a bunch of how-to books from the library and make an evening of it!"

This time, it was reading the leader manual for the Girl Scout Cadette Designing Robots badge, and noticing that origami is one of the suggested starting activities for Step 1: Pick a challenge.

Hey! We like origami! I should get a bunch of how-to books from the library and make an evening of it!

Which, with the addition of the first season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (on DVD, also from the library), is exactly what we did:

Syd made a small fleet of foxes from Origami Wild Animals:

I busied myself make the stars from Hello Origami, trying to get the folds even and then making myself an entire rainbow. Later, Syd sneaked them onto the Christmas tree for me!

The folds are for sure not even, but whatever.

Will is our origami champion, though. She made the Compass from Modern Kudusuma Origami and made us our tree topper!

We have a nine-foot tree this year, so that star is HUGE!

On another night, we watched the NOVA episode on the way that engineers are attempting to integrate origami into robotics, and that sealed our connection between our fun project and thinking about efficient, effective, and appealing robot designs.

And speaking of sealing... previously, we've experimented with sealing origami designs with beeswax. The five billion coats of polyurethane sealant that I just put on my lap desk, however, had made me wonder if we could also seal origami that way. I don't know what the benefits of it would be, though, as our origami paper is already pretty archival--perhaps it would stiffen it and make it even more workable as an ornament or in a garland?

Stay tuned!

Here are the origami how-to books that we still have on our shelves:

I want to make the folded box and the lazy Susan. Will wants to make the dragon.

I think the Christmas tree and Santa would make good embellishments for the front of a greeting card. And the Star of David looks super easy!

I am seriously going to try the gift tags before I wrap the last of my Christmas gifts, because I've really been needing a DIY gift tag!

Honestly, we're not going to make anything from this book, but I'm keeping it on our shelves until it's due so that I can pretend like we are. I SUPER want a giant paper sphere made of origami octagons folded as edges!

I thought that Syd was going to go nuts for this origami book all about folding miniature articles of clothing, but she's not into it. Nevertheless, *I* want to fold a couple of the skirts and then see if she'll draw me a person to match.

Okay, we are legitimately going to make EVERY SINGLE THING in this book. It's got a ton of geometric solids, and then interesting extensions of them, and creative embellishments... I'll be fine having this be our weekly math enrichment activity for the rest of the school year.

I think we've got enough to keep us occupied on all of our long, cold winter nights!

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2013 Science Fair

While one girl and her Momma have been invested in the fashion show of late, the other girl and her Dadda have been just as busy.

I was sad to see that this year's homeschool Science Fair overlapped with one of our Trashion/Refashion Show rehearsals, but such is life--one must choose one's commitments, and then commit to one's choices. However, having only one kid in the Science Fair this year made this year's Science Fair a fine project for just that kid and her Dadda to do together. I left it all to them--I incorporated some time for Willow to work on her project during our school days, and I helped her write a reference guide, and she dictated her report to me, and I helped her rehearse her presentation, but she and Matt did all the hands-on dirty work, which included making several paper airplanes, flying each of them 20 times and measuring each flight, averaging and line graphing all the flights, and making some pretty kick-ass graphics to represent the data. It's good to have a graphic designer for a father!

Here's Will rehearsing her presentation, the day of the Science Fair:


She was really proud of her project (as she should be!), and pretty excited to share it--

--and, okay, maybe a little nervous, too--

--at least until she's distracted by Matt:

We call this the Willow Death Glare. We are often its victims.

 I wish I could show you Willow's actual presentation, which she did an amazing job at, so comfortable and confident and focused in front of all those eyes, but there are a bunch of other kids in it. It's super-cute watching her coach all the kids through the making of the Dynamic Dart--I wasn't sure how this part would go, since I know from experience that students will get everything wrong that it's possible to get wrong when following instruction, with seemingly every student doing something uniquely incorrect all at the same time. And yep, that's how it went here, but Willow went around and helped kids who got stuck, and a couple of parents helped out, and in the end, everyone had their very own Dynamic Dart.

Fortunately, the other side of the conference room was free--a perfect place, really, for the flying of paper airplanes:

Across town, Syd and I finished our rehearsal, ran to the car, sped over to the library, screeched into a parking spot, and galloped inside, just missing the last presentation, but just in time for the socialization. Homeschoolers are a diverse bunch, and although we see friends from this group a few times a week, there are other friends that we only see at these types of events, so there's a lot of playing to get done in a short amount of time.

And, of course, a lot of smiles to let out:

What can I say? Science makes us happy!

Horrorgami Review: My Grim Reaper is Better than Matt's

If you're going to do some origami, or rather some projects from my free review copy of Horrorgami: Creepy Creatures, Ghastly Ghouls, and Other Fiendish Paper Projects, then you might as well make a night of it:

• husband/partner/crafting partner
• Halloween playlist streaming on Spotify
• margaritas, heavy on the tequila

Oh, and you'd better put the kids to bed first, right?

Our confidence amply fueled by tequila, Matt and I skipped straight to the Level 2 projects, fought briefly over who got the black origami paper before realizing that the book came with plenty of black origami paper, then settled down to work, interrupted regularly by Matt's inability to remember the folding symbols from the front of the book (I should have copied that page real quick, but tequila inhibits my common sense).

I am quite proud to note that I am a much better drunk origami folder than Matt is:

My hooded grim reaper is coming together nicely.

Matt's having problems with his hooded grim reaper (he did mountain folds instead of valley folds, silly boy!)

 Although this might have been hindering Matt's folding skills:

His excuse? "There wasn't enough triple sec left in the bottle for another margarita, so I thought I'd just finish it off."

 I've never really done origami before, and I was a little surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I especially like when you have to fold and unfold something to make a crease that you then use later--so tricky!

MY hooded grim reaper can stand independently, while Matt's  deformed guy has to be held up:

 It's not going to take many souls THAT way, ha ha ha!

The bats turned out pretty great, too--

--although I should have let Matt cut my bat's head for me. I don't freehand too much, and my bat now has a Kermit the Frog head:

It was a VERY fun way to spend the evening with my Matt (You're going to think we're totally lame when I tell you that we usually just watch movies at night after the kids are asleep, NOT play Scrabble or read out loud to each other or bake together or any of the other non-TV, non-sex activities that healthy couples usually engage in). I'd set it aside as an evening activity to do with only him, however, not just to lure him away from Netflix streaming for the evening, but also because I assumed the origami projects would be too difficult for the girls, and I take no pleasure in "helping" a kid complete a craft project that is so difficult for her that the result is really my work, not hers.

That being said, look who spied the book at the breakfast table the next morning (also last evening's craft table), and jumped right into her own horrorgami!

With actually only a little help from me, Sydney and Willow both folded a pretty passable ghost, a Level 1 project, drew on its ghosty face, and hung it up to look spooky.

As I watched them work, seeing how much pleasure they were both taking in their folding, I thought to my self, "Mathematics! Logic! Fine motor skills!", and I immediately pulled up our public library's web catalog and requested several children's origami books. 

But by the time those books get picked up, I think the kiddos are going to be experts on origami ghosts, and jack-o-lantern faces, and witch's hats.