Asian Art with Origami endeavors!

T-Rex dino origami



3rd graders are just starting our Asian art unit on the art history timeline! We started first by making  watercolor effect chinese fans out of coffee filters with cultural symbols on them. While we worked on them I played the DVD called "Between the Folds". It's a documentary all about the art and science of origami. Totally facinating and the students are majorly wowed. You'll constantly hear "COOOOOOL!" or "WHOOOOOOOOOOOA!". Kinders even are wowed. I said it was an introduction into what we'll be working on next time....ORIGAMI!

Well to make this complex task a little simpler, I finalized the choices down to 3 different dinosaurs (that range from easy to medium difficulty) and a super simple 'sailboat/yaht' and a simple 'jumping frog'. With origami the 3rd graders are really excited because it looks cool, but as soon as we start, the directions are more difficult and take time to read. Frusteration breaks out as soon as we start. So we had a short discussion about what's going to happen. Are we all going to be expert folders in this class period...No. They agreed. Is it going to take time? Yes. They agreed. Are you going to have problems and questions? Yes. Absolutely, they agreed.  I explained that I had many challenges with learning how to do all of these. I wanted them to try them on their own and I would be rotating in a circle table, to table answering questions. What could they do in the mean time? Ask others for help. If they saw that someone was successful, teach each other! I said, I want this to be fun and maybe you have another way of making your own origami! Then, the stress was taken off and the students were working independently.

a rainbow of origami colors



 3rd graders first finished making their Asian tea cups (another post) then they could grab 3 pieces of colored origami paper. I had extra plain white pieces of paper in case they wanted to make more! Then they go over to see what 3 designs they want to make and grab the corresponding directions. I also had out colored Sharpie markers that they coud use to add pattern to jazz up their origami! Also they can add detail if desired. We ended up having a blast and talked about how we had hurdles we had to overcome but enjoyed the out come and challenge!



Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur




Brochiosaurus





Stegosaurus



jumping frog