Teaching origami -- input welcomed

moki · Post by **moki** » December 30th, 2005, 1:45 am

I've been invited to teach origami in a rural area in the Dominican Republic by a charity that I've worked with. They built a school complex in an area where nothing else existed prior.

I'll be teaching origami for just 4-5 days to kids who have likely never even heard of it, and of course being the DR, they speak Spanish. I've found basic fold instructions in Spanish, but I'm looking for input on:

1) What models would be good to teach them. I was thinking relatively simple, rewarding things like the crane, cup, Yoshizawa's butterfly, and so on. Anyone have any suggestions/links to PDFs of models I might use?

2) I'd really like some kind of overview/short history of origami in Spanish, so I could hand it out to the children to give them some frame of reference in terms of the art they'll be learning.

3) Any general suggestions on teaching origami to first-timers would be welcome too!

Thanks in advance. Some of the models I'm considering using can be found here:

http://people.ambrosiasw.com/~andrew/diagrams/cfcf/

wolf · Post by **wolf** » December 30th, 2005, 2:05 am

I'd suggest doing a search for "teaching" at the O-list archives (http://origami.kvi.nl/cgi-bin/oigquery.sh); there's quite a bit of information there on teaching origami, in terms of what models to teach, how to teach, how to pace out the lesson, etc.

Unless you plan to bring lots of kami there, I'm guessing your main source of working material will be newsprint, magazine paper and copy paper. Fortunately, a lot of the traditional folds can be successfully folded from these various papers.

For Spanish origami resources, a Google search on "papiroflexia" yields lots of Spanish origami websites (eg http://www.papiroflexia.net).

moki · Post by **moki** » December 30th, 2005, 2:14 am

Paper isn't a problem -- I have a huge stockpile of various kami I brought back from Japan and/or purchased @ Origami USA -- thanks for the tips, keep 'em coming!

wolf · Post by **wolf** » December 30th, 2005, 2:19 am

Paper is also very very heavy to carry.

David Petty's website probably contains the net's largest collection of diagrams for traditional models: http://members.aol.com/ukpetd/

Action models are always a hit with kids too, eg the jumping frog and fortune teller.