Origami Nation

It's the Origami Nation Sensation!

After the origami butterflies (lesson here) my 4th and 5th graders were hooked!  They practically demanded more origami.  And I was not about to get in the way of their new found passion (or favorite past time for some).  So this is how it went down...

4th Grade:

Origami jumping frogs.  'Nuff said. Insert crowd going wild (i.e. 4th graders jumping up and down cheering once they heard the word "origami." To be honest, after I said that I'm not sure they even heard the words "jumping frogs" above all the cheers).  The butterflies were a little bit tricky at times for the 4th graders, so jumping frogs were right up their alley.  Easy and adorable.  Again, I used a YouTube tutorial which I paused between each step, demonstrated it myself and then helped the kiddos when needed.  Once we had our frogs made (we used 4"x6" florescent notecards for ours), we drew on faces and any other details we wanted.  Then it was time to play games with our frogs!  I made paper lily pads for each table of kids.  The object of the game was to get their frog to jump and land on on the flower in as few jumps as possible.  I also made a bull's eye bullfrog's eye game where the kids tried to land their frog as close to the center as possible to beat out their friends.  A few kids were so taken with the origami frogs that they just kept making more!  I only offered 2 notecards per student due to my supply, but that didn't stop them from using 8x11 cardstock froggies!

This is the YouTube tutorial I used

Our Frog Videos:

Students playing the bull's eye and lilypad games

Some students made froggy families

5th Grade:

 

It's official!  Fifth grade is NOT too old for puppet making!  My fifth graders had a ball making these origami faces!  We were inspired by the origami double pyramid with this one.  I even found a YouTube tutorial on how to transform the double pyramid into an origami talking puppet!  From that point, I let the students decide how they wanted to design their puppet.  I showed them how they could be held two different ways as a talking puppet and encouraged them to be creative with their facial expressions, features and accessories.  Some of the kids even made it so you could hold their puppet either way and still see a face!  I was quite impressed with their ingenuity and the variety of ideas I had in the classroom!  The results reminded me a lot of the Muppets, so naturally, I recorded my kids with their puppets to the Muppets' song "Manamana!"  I'd share that video but a few I want to maintain the privacy of my kiddos.    Enough about me and the lesson...let's get to more photos!

 This student decided to design her origami and keep it as a phone stand.

Videos we used and were inspired by:

Origami Steps/ Tutorial

Muppets-Manamana