ORIGAMI AND….PODCASTS?

After reading the title of this weeks learning project update, you might be thinking… HUH?

This week I spent many hours in the tractor helping my family farm. During this time I thought that I should perhaps look up origami podcasts on Spotify. To my surprise there was a couple of podcasts! The following is a screen shot of what I found when searching.

I decided to listen to a podcast done by Stuff You Should Know titled “Origami: Folding Goodness”. Within this episode the hosts of the show provide the history of origami as well as different tips, tricks, and resources.

What I learned: 

  • to get a good crease when folding, you can use a paper clip
  • Animals are very common to make
  • Modular origami uses different sheets of paper, making the same shape and then bringing them together to make one big shape
  • There are lots of different kinds of origami such as action, jewelry and tessellations.

The podcast recommends that people who are learning Origami should check out an online resource called Paper Kawaii

After listening to the podcast, I then visited the Kawaii website where different resources such as diagrams and video tutorials are available and I decided to focus on this resource for the week. 

Paper I purchased for this project

Next, I purchased a pad of square paper from Walmart and got started on my folding journey. The Paper Kawaii website has a menu titled “beginner” and this is where I started. My first creation was a woven heart! This was fun to create and required two pieces of paper, although mine did not turn out a perfect heart shape, like the video tutorial displayed. Because of this, I tried to make the heart again. The second attempt turned out a little bit better, but I did not have as much paper to work with as what the person doing the tutorial had… I’m thinking I maybe missed a step?

Woven hearts

Next, I decided to create the famous paper crane! This was very simple to create using one square piece of paper! One thing I did notice is that the tail on my cranes sticks straight up, and I would have liked it to have gone a little more outwards, however, I am very happy with the way it turned out!

Paper Cranes

After completing the crane, I moved on to a more difficult shape which was a lotus flower using one piece of paper. I chose to create this shape as I thought it looked beautiful and I was feeling confident with my skills. Turns out, I was feeling a little bit ambitious. I tried four times to create the flower using a tutorial video from the website and each time I ended up ripping the paper and got very confused on what I was supposed to be doing. I then took a step back and decided to create a more simple 8 petal flower that was posted on the website as well. This flower was simple to make and I am proud of the way it turned out.

8 Petal Flower

My sister joined me for an evening this past week and we decided to make hearts. This heart is different than the first woven one I previously created. The one we chose to do used one rectangular piece of paper 15cmx6.2cm. This was my favourite shape to make this week as I found the tutorial to be straight forward, but also added challenge as the folds in the centre are very tiny.

Hearts

Lastly, I chose to try an intermediate level of difficulty and created a mandarin bird! I had a blast creating these birds, however, the tail was very confusing and took multiple tries to figure out. The first bird I made, the tail was pointing the wrong direction and I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong. I decided that I would try again and eventually I figured it out and got the tail to point more upwards which is what the tutorial looked like! I also really like the blue bird as it reminds me of the twitter icon.

Mandarin Bird

The following video shows how I created the paper crane, heart, and blue bird:

Review on the website titled Paper Kawaii: I believe that this is the perfect resource to start out on. The website has many different categories to help you create something of interest to you. I also really appreciated the fact that the website is broken down into levels of difficulty. The tutorials inform the viewer what sizes of paper is appropriate to use, and the size that is being used in the actual video. This is a resource that I could see myself using in the classroom. As a teacher, I would display the videos using a projector or smartboard and have students follow along together.

Tech resources used:

  • Spotify
  • Website: Kawaii w/ embedded YouTube videos
  • iMovie to create video of my creations
  • YouTube to upload video of myself

What I learned: 

  • There are many different kinds of origami
  • This skill is not as easy as one may think
  • Origami takes patience
  • It takes practice (many attempts!) to actually learn the skill

My plan and goals moving into next week:

  • Explore a new platform: Instagram to find tutorials
  • Try using different types of paper (newspaper)
  • Attempt the difficult flower once again and not give up
  • Create more animals to become more confident with folding