Every year Origami USA sponsors an exhibit of Origami By Children. You can learn about it here. The deadline for submissions is fast approaching, so last weekend I was able to get my kids to sit down and focus on coming up with something. Lizzy, who is 7 now, started to take an interest in origami 2 years ago, when she invented her first original model, a picture frame.
Last year she did the traditional Lily. It’s more complicated than it looks, but the hardest move in is a squash fold, and she’s good at those. I coached her, showing her the model and encouraging her to take is slow and fold neatly. She did a nice enough job that her model got in the exhibition, and OUSA donated some origami books to her school.
This year she’s had more exposure to folding and knows how to follow diagrams, so I let her decide what to do. She folded a bunch of things out of John Montroll’s Christmas Origami, including the candle, bell, and candy cane. I guess no time of year is the wrong time to think about Christmas when you’re seven. She decided to do the ring from the Twelve Days of Christmas, and put five of them together. Of course it’s not a hard model technically — the folding style is know as “Pureland” meaning it’s only mountain and valley folds, but there’s some art to it in terms of color and composition. I think she did a nice job. I hope she gets in the show again.
Michelle, at three and a half, wants to do everything her big sister does, so she was along for the trip. I tried to teach her the bell, but the reverse fold just blew her mind, and 11 steps is about 4 too many for a 3-year-old to handle. So I scaled back and taught her the classic cup, on which the bell is based, which was just in her range.