I teach students about art, creativity, and visual problem solving at Carthage Junior High. My wife is also an art teacher, and my three kids are all into their own arts, music, drama, imaginary unicorn development!
This is our attempt at the Modular origami icosahedron (stellated icosahedron). Each sphere is made of 30 sheets of 4x4 in paper that were individually folded to match. We followed directions from this website. Below is a stack of about 10 of the projects.
Students are trying to build a 30 sheet modular origami kusadama today. There are many places for directions, here is the link to the hard copy directions including pictures we used in class. This model is based on the Sonobe design by origami artists Toshi Takahama an Mitsunobu Sonobe. I have also included some pictues of models I finished in the past.
better known as the IQ Light or Infinity Lights, this geometric form is the brainchild of
Danish designer Holger Strøm in 9772.
Holger Strøm
Constructed using interlocking quadrilaterals, (Hence his name for the light, IQ lights) you can make all sorts of variation on polyhedra- (multi faced 3-d geometric forms.)
I first discovered this from a fellow art teachers blog, Art in the Big Green Room. She had a link to an Instructable that had a template. I grabbed the template and duplicated it in Paint to get 6 per sheet. Walmart trip to pick up cardstock, and had Central Office copy, enough so each student could get 30 pieces.
Here is the revised template.
Students cut, then build the model.
Just for fun, I went to Wikipedia and found this rotating model. Interesingly, each face is a rhombus with sides based on the golden ratio!
Very helpful for me and students it to check out instructional videos on YouTube like this one...
I love VWs, and my principal drives a VW bug. she also loves hot dogs so when I found this box I combined the two! papercraft model can be found at this link. it gets me thinking I think my students will make some papercraftmodels!
It also reminds me of a song my wife remembers from her youth:
I know a weiner man he owns a weiner stand he sells most anything from hot dogs on down one day i'll join his life i'll be his weiner wife hot dog i love that weiner man!
This started as a sub plan. Our 4 floors look like a starry night!
Basically, I printed this template off, and photocopied it with scrapbook patterns on the other side. Each student needs 5 templates. ( for me, that 750 copies!) They cut, score, fold, glue. Then we hang. Here are the steps on the instruction sheet I give to every student. The student copy included an image from the original website.
5 Point Star Directions
1.Cut and Score.Cut five shapes using the template. Use the paper template as a guide and score along the fold lines to give crisp folds. I used an empty ball point pen.
2.Fold.Fold along the lines and glue the long edge together. This forms one point of the star. Repeat until all five points have been formed.
3.Assemble the star.Now it's time to start assembling the star! Take two points, run a line of glue or double sided tape along one of the inverted 'v' edges of the open part of the point and attach this to the next point as shown.
4.Finishing.Attach the final point to complete the star. This can be a little fiddly, so it is best to attach one side of the final point, before attaching the remaining side.
Another semester, another group of 7th and 8th graders. We are starting this semester with papercraft. About 10 out of 150 had ever even heard of papercraft! I downloaded this YETI from http://www.curiositygroup.com/, a papercraft website. They produce a new calendar project for every month! Lets practice cutting, color, pasting, and following directions! Plus, a fun poem about yetis....
"There once was a cat-loving Yeti,
Whose favorite dish was spaghetti,
'Til he went to Nantucket,
And looked in a bucket
And saw ice cream topped with confetti."
here is a link to the PDF, if you want to try it on your own!
