Origami

Our house is littered with paper airplanes. And, origami rocket ships. Roo’s standard request these days is “can you make me a paper airplane?”. Or as Ryan taught him to call it “an aircraft”. According to Roo aircraft can fly “super fast” and he usually pronounces “super fast” super fast. Now that he’s discovered origami and that you can find almost any pattern on the computer, his requests have expanded and he asks for rocket ships, aliens, or robots. The word origami comes from oru meaning "folding", and kami meaning "paper. (sometimes the sound "k" changes to "g" when it's in the middle of a word) The goal of this art is to create a representation of an object using geometric folds and crease patterns preferably without the use of gluing or cutting the paper, and using only one piece of paper. However, modern origami may not follow these rules strictly and designs may include cutting. It seems to me that the skill of folding is emphasized for young children. Similar to how Westerners may teach children how to draw circles or a happy face, or use a scissors. Case in point, when we were at the doctor with Roo on Monday, during the initial evaluation the health care worker asked Roo to fold a piece of paper “this way” then “that way”. I imagine he did this as a quick evaluation of Roo’s developmental level. When I realized the purpose of the question a part of me wanted to say “wait, we don’t teach our kids to fold” but I kept quiet and Roo did just fine. Lately he likes to sit with a piece of paper and fold many creases and announce that he’s using his “imagination” to make origami. There is an amazing website available in English. It has anime to demonstrate the folds. I highly recommend! http://www.origami-club.com/en/.