Origami: The Hobby of a Six-Year-Old

It started innocently enough. At church, no less.

Aaron's teacher showed him how to fold a paper airplane. He came home and made fifty of them.

The paper airplanes gradually transformed. He started making so many different kinds of airplanes (I grew up under the false impression that a paper airplane was just a paper airplane--wrong!) that he ended up studying the effect of the dihedral angle of wings for his science fair project.

From there, he went to origami. One day, he came home from school with a book of very easy projects, and he made them all in an hour.

I have pushed a lot of things on my kids (reading, piano, chores...), but this is a hobby I've done almost nothing to encourage. (After he'd been doing it for months, I finally bought him a pack of real origami paper, and that's been about the extent of it.)

It has been so fun to watch him discover something he really loves and pursue it all on his own. When we go to the library, he parks himself in the crafts section and pores over instruction books before deciding what he wants to bring home.

At home, he uses the coffee table as a workspace and can be found there most afternoons after school (I think it is a great de-stresser for him.) One of the things I've loved about origami is that, for the most part, he can teach himself through books and videos. Occasionally, he will ask for clarification on a step, but most of the time, he figures it out all on his own.

Two of his favorite books (found by him, not by me) have been Make Your Own Art: Origami and Not-Quite-So-Easy Origami. They have taught him how to make (among other things) a crane, bird, pinwheel, and fortune teller. (The fortune teller especially has brought back a lot of childhood memories for me. It's been so entertaining to see the fortunes Aaron comes up with: "You will have 100 people in your family." "You will be an amazing Lego Builder." Or, my personal favorite, "You will read 2600 minutes in one day.")


Although, like I said, I haven't done anything to cultivate Aaron's hobby, I have used it to my advantage. If you have a boy with origami skills, you might as well use them, I say.

My dad's 60th birthday was earlier this month, and since that's a bigger birthday than, say, 59, I wanted to do something special. I thought it would be nice if my siblings and I wrote sixty things about him that we love, but then I decided to extend the invitation to extended family and friends. After a few days, we had a great little collection of notes.

Growing up, my dad always made banners for us when it was our birthdays, so I thought it would be fun to make him a banner out of the sixty notes. At first, I was just going to cut out sixty hearts and write the notes directly onto them. But then I thought, Why not make sixty origami hearts and tuck each note into the pocket at the back of it? Then it would be like opening a little letter each time.

Turns out, sixty is a lot more than I realized, but I had just the boy for the job. Up to that point, he'd never made a heart (I guess six-year-old boys think ninja stars are more exciting than hearts), but he quickly learned, and then he just pumped them out. I kind of expected him to get bored after fifteen of them, but he didn't. Then Max wanted to help, and even though his folds weren't as sharp or as accurate as Aaron's, he did a great job. Together, they cranked them out in no time with very little effort on my part (although I admit to making a few hearts myself, just for the fun of it).

Then I punched holes in the side and strung them together. I printed off all the messages from family and friends, cut them apart, and tucked them into the little pockets on the hearts. By the time I was done, the banner was quite long. We stuffed the whole thing into an oversized envelope and shipped it off to Colorado where my dad opened it on his birthday and then spent the rest of the day unfolding the little notes and reading them.

This has been such a great hobby for Aaron. It's relatively mess-free (although if you saw his room stuffed with airplanes, cranes, and ninja stars, I think you'd disagree), quiet, and creative. Aaron has always loved math, and I think origami is great introduction to geometry with all its angles and shapes. It has taught me that sometimes my kids don't need me to come up with activities or interests for them. Sometimes what they come up with on their own is just perfect.

A Book and Craft for Valentine's Day

Yesterday I put an envelope in the mail. It was addressed to my family in Colorado, and it contained three paper chains--one from Aaron, one from Maxwell, one from Bradley. They were inspired by the picture book, The Giant Hug, and as such, we like to call them Hug Chains.

To find out more about this book and craft (including what we wrote on the Hug Chain), check out my post on What Do We Do All Day.

Read the full post here.

What did your kids send their loved ones for`Valentine's Day?

A Halloween Craft (Candle Jars) and a Book

Halloween is not even close to my favorite holiday, but since having kids, I enjoy it much more than I used to. Ever since Aaron was born, we've planned our costumes around a theme (this year we're going as pirates), and I'm hoping my kids will humor me with this tradition for at least a couple more years.

Fall break was earlier this month, and since Mike couldn't take any time off work, we didn't have any really exciting plans.  But out of all my kids, Aaron is the one who just lives for crafts, so I knew if I had just one thing for us to make, he would consider it a successful break from school.

I found these Halloween lanterns at Red Ted Art and thought it would be a fairly simple craft. Plus, my kids love decorations, and, I'll admit, I do very little decorating for Halloween, so now they'll at least have one thing they can pull out every year.

If you're looking for a way to fill the hours before trick-or-treating tonight, you might give these Halloween candle jars a try:

What you'll need:

Glass jar (we used a couple of mason jars and an old olive jar
Orange, green, or white tissue paper
Mod podge
Foam brush
Black paper

First, tear all of the tissue paper into pieces--the more irregular, the better.

(The night before I wanted to make this, I went through all the supplies (all five of them) in my head to make sure we were good to go. However, the next morning when I went to get the tissue paper, it wasn't where I thought it was supposed to be. I could find some white and green, but no orange. I had no desire to run to the store with four kids in tow (these are the times when I wish my mom lived next door) just for tissue paper. In my search through the house, I found some orange crepe paper left over from a trunk-or-treat several years ago. So we used it instead. It didn't hold up to the glue quite as well as the tissue paper, but hey, it worked and saved me a trip to the store.)

Put down a layer of mod podge on the jar. Arrange the pieces of tissue paper on top (some overlap is good).

 

Go over all the tissue paper with another layer (or two) of mod podge. Aaron could do most of this on his own (but not without a big glue mess all over the table), but the other two needed quite a bit of help.

Cut out pictures or jack-o-lantern shapes for the front. For the silhouettes, I just printed them, and then we cut them out. For the jack-o-lantern, I freehanded it out of black cardstock.

 

Put the pictures where you want them and then mod podge over the top.

Let it all dry. Put a candle (or in our case, a tealight) in the bottom and enjoy the spooky light while reading a scary (or not-so-scary) book.

Like this one:

I reserved very few Halloween books at the library this year. I don't know why. I guess I just wasn't feeling it.

However, I did check out this new book by Kazuno Kohara. We love her other Halloween-esque book, Ghosts in the House, and The Midnight Library was delightful as well.

It's about a little librarian who works in a library that is only open at night. The story focuses on one night in particular when some of the patrons forget to use their library manners. The little librarian finds creative and kind ways to help them with their problems.

The story itself is fine and cute and all that, but it's the illustrations that make this book a real treat. A limited color palette (light orange, blue, and black) with the characters being outlined instead of colored in makes these pictures fun and different to look at. I seriously would like to frame four of them and put them up as Halloween decorations.

I hope all of you have a safe Halloween filled with yummy treats, awesome costumes, and fun neighborhood activities.

 

What are your Halloween plans for the day?

Summer Fun: Fireworks T-Shirt

Happy Independence Day! We just got home from a morning at the parade where my boys were wearing their patriotic t-shirts they made earlier this week.

A few weeks ago, I saw an idea for a fireworks t-shirt on Pinterest. My kids all love craft projects, and this looked like something even my two-year-old could handle. Plus, I already had most of the supplies.

If you want to whip out a shirt of your own to wear for the fireworks tonight, you'll need:

• a white cotton t-shirt
• a piece of cardboard (to put inside the shirt while painting)
• paper plate
• spiky ball (I found these in the $1 section at Wal-Mart)
• acrylic paint in patriotic colors

To decorate, dip the ball in paint, and then press onto the shirt. We did one color at a time, and I rinsed the balls in between.

We used three colors of paint: red, blue, and gold glitter. I painted their names along the bottom edge of the shirts.

I was hoping the boys would concentrate the paint in certain areas to make it look like separate fireworks. Instead, theirs look more like patriotic confetti. But you can catch the vision, right?

Out of all my kids, I thought Aaron (the five-year-old) was going to be the most excited about decorating a shirt. (He loves painting and dressing up for holidays, so I thought I was well on my way to becoming his favorite mom.) But when I explained what we were going to do, he said, "I don't want to paint with a ball." "But that's the best part!" I cried. "No, it won't look good. I just want to paint with a paintbrush."

I wanted to fight it because I already had everything all planned out. But then I thought, This isn't a big deal. Max and Bradley want to do it my way, so I can let Aaron do it his way. And you know what? It turned out great, and he was so happy with the result.

Summer Fun: Cup Launchers

With my mom and sister here last week, we didn't really need any extra activities. The boys were perfectly content playing game after game after game, going on walks to the park, reading hundreds of books, and covering the driveway with chalk art.

But this week, they've been a little more restless, and with only one adult to entertain them instead of three, I needed an activity that would keep them busy and not result in fighting.

So we made these cup launchers, an idea I first saw in a post on Spoonful.

Aaron goes crazy for just about any craft, and the other two happily followed along. They were totally focused and engaged for at least an hour (while Clark slept peacefully--bless that baby!). And afterwards, my four-year-old thanked me for coming up with such a fun idea (I wish I could take credit, but I rely heavily on the creativity of others).

If you want to make some cup launchers of your own, here's what you'll need:

• paper/picture
• markers
• scissors
• two plastic cups (I would go for heavy duty ones. They have to hold up to a lot of pushing and popping)
• two rubber bands (again, heavy duty is ideal)
• tape (whatever variety you prefer)

First, they had to decide what picture they wanted on the front of their cups. Ideally, it needed to be something that could fly or bounce or hop. The three of them spent a good chunk of time debating the launching abilities of various objects and animals. For example, does a dolphin qualify since it leaps out of the water? What about a shark? Or a lion?

They finally settled on a rocket ship, a dragon, and a frog. Aaron sketched his own dragon while Max and Bradley opted for printing theirs out and coloring them.

Once they were done drawing and coloring, they cut out the pictures.

Then we taped them to the front of the cups.

To assemble the launcher, take the cup with the picture on the front and make four 1/2 inch snips around the edge. The snips should be evenly spaced. Put a small piece of tape at the top of each snip to prevent the cup from splitting up the side. (This really is necessary. We had one piece of tape fall off, and that little snip spread all the way up one side.)

Take the rubber bands and cut them open, so that you have two long strips instead of two circles. Knot one end and thread it through a snip. Pull the other end across to the snip on the other side. Slide it through the snip and then knot that end as well. Do the same thing with the other rubber band and the two remaining snips.

The cup should look like this with the rubber bands making an X and knots along the outside edge. (I should have used colored tape, so you could see it, but it's there, I promise.)

We experimented a little with the tightness of the rubber bands. At first, I pulled them just to the point of stretching, but I think that was a little too tight. The launcher seemed to work better when there was just a little bit of slack in the rubber bands (this also helped the rubber bands not break).

To use the launcher, slide the cup with the rubber bands over the other cup. Push it down so the rubber bands stretch out.

Then let it go, and watch the rocket ship (or dragon) (or frog), spring up into space.

Then repeat again and again until the rubber bands break and have to be replaced (which ours did).

This is a fun activity because 1) it's cheap, 2) it can be played with outside or inside, 3) the picture can be changed to extend the fun, and 4) it actually works.

Summer Fun: Painting on Ice

On Monday, I wrote about my hopeful plans for the summer, which include doing at least one out-of-the-ordinary activity each week. It's time to start checking off items from my pinterest boards!

First up, painting on ice.
 

This is actually something I meant to write about last summer. It was quite the popular (and easy!) activity with my kids. It was inspired by this post on Learn Play Imagine, but we simplified it.

The boys were so excited when I asked them if they wanted to freeze some water for ice painting this summer. They hadn't forgotten how much fun we had with it last year.

Here's what you'll need:

• ice blocks 
• watercolors (nothing fancy--Crayola works great)
• paintbrush
• water (for rinsing out the brushes)

Give each child a block of ice and paintbrush, and let them go to town.

We've experimented with different sizes of ice blocks. Last summer, we were still renting and only had the small freezer above the fridge, so we froze water in cereal bowls or muffin tins. Now we have an upright freezer, so we had plenty of room to freeze water in three small mixing bowls. The boys seemed to like this size best because it gave them a bigger canvas for their masterpieces.

My boys all have different styles. Aaron likes to paint in big color blocks. Maxwell likes to do a mosaic of beautiful colors. And Bradley starts out with a similar mosaic that eventually all turns into the same shade of brown.

 

After awhile, the ice becomes much more melty, and the colors just slide off. The ice turns clear and transparent, which is beautiful in the summer sunshine.

 

It's at this point that my kids start playing with the ice. (This is a 2-in-1 activity. Score!) They hold it and see how fast it melts in their hands. They slide it around with their feet. And they throw it on the ground and watch it shatter into interesting pieces.

 

I love this activity because 1) it's easy to set up, 2) the mess stays outside, 3) it's cold, 4) it keeps my kids entertained for a long time, and 5) it's easy to clean up.

 A super hero cape is not required for this activity, but it will make you feel infinitely more awesome.