The Origami Forum

Don't know if anyone on here has thoughts on the super-easy end of things, but thought I'd ask anyway.

My 4 year old has been super into origami lately, and has been working through a lot of what's on the "origami club" website as well messing around with his own stuff.

I think he might like a book with some more origami diagrams for his 5th birthday that's coming up (or some pdfs I can print for him). He needs easy stuff (and can't handle if the paper gets too thick with layers), but is bored by the super easy preschool animal faces (he just learned to do a petal fold yesterday, and can do the bird base, water bomb base, pocket folds, etc...) He's not super neat in his folding, but is getting better.

One trick is that the diagrams have to be ones where words are as minimal as possible, or at least where you don't have to read them. He can follow the arrows and pictures quite well, but can't read at all (so if it says something like "repeat steps 8-10 on the other side" he'll be trying to puzzle it out from the picture). We've found that origami diagrams and paper airplane instructions are pretty variable in how much the words matter.

You don't need to buy a book, there are plenty of diagrams for simple models for free on the internet. Most have text, but if he knows the symbols he should be able to fold them without reading anything.
Nice to see that some kids start origami at such a young age.

The books by Paulo Mulatinho are very good for children and adults alike. Two of them I already had when I was about the age of your son. They also include many action models.

The best origami books for the little children (2 years+) is Let's Fold! (Kumon First Steps Workbooks) and More Let's Fold! (Kumon Publishing) You can find them on the online shops

Actually, I think he needs something more intermediate than that.

He's worked his way through much of the Origami Club website and finds many of those "not interesting enough", and is disappointed if they involve cutting. On the other side, he's been trying to work his way through John Montroll's "Origami for the Enthusiast." And while he's pretty much managed the first few fish in there (messily), I doubt he can get much farther in it without a lot of help (kindergarten fine motor control, and he can't read any of the instructions so is relying on just the pictures).

What's a good in-between? (preferably with some action models, since he loves those).