At the beginning of class when I found out we were going to be working with paper doing origami, I was nervous enough. Working with paper has always been a struggle and following directions while trying to create something simple like a flower is more difficult than you would think.

One second your paper is folded in half like a hot dog and the next step says something simple like “fold it the opposite way and turn it inside out”.

It seems easy enough when they do that step it looks like this:

 

But then you try and it looks like this:

 

so, in short; origami is hard. And if origami alone wasn’t hard enough, we had to put a light on it…what? a light? on paper? I was confused at first, but then recalled how we used a battery to turn on little tiny LED lights.

My partner and I got started by looking up different videos of origami tutorials. We picked a simple flower, simple

We had to rewatch the steps over and over again, trying to figure out his movements and folds. During this process I learned that following directions is easier said then done. Watching his hands on the screen and following along was very difficult, but after getting something correct, it was very satisfying and once we got the hang of it, it was actually kinda fun.

I could definitely see myself as a future educator using this project in the future. It makes use of two sides of the brain. Creativity in creating the origami itself, but also technically designing the project in a way that will light up, as well as stand up on it’s own.

Here was our end result:

The process was interesting and very much a trail and error process, connecting this project to the others we have done that are very much focused around a cycle and design thinking.

“Tearing the paper means you’ve stopped believing in the infinite possibilities of a square.” 
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds