National Origami Day is celebrated on November 11th each year to honor the Japanese art form of origami. Origami is the ancient Japanese culture of paper folding, which requires intricate folding to create complex shapes out of square pieces of paper.
The History of Origami
Paper was invented in China during the 2nd century BC and was brought to Japan by Buddhist monks during the 6th century AD. The Japanese developed origami into a very detailed art form, with most instructions being passed down orally until the 17th century when handwritten instructions began to be created.
The Relationship Between Origami and Geometry
Origami is closely related to geometry in many ways. For example, origami can be used to explore two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes, lines, angles, triangles, symmetry, perimeter, area, and volume. Origami can also be used to create mathematical models of real-world objects.
Learn also about The Chemistry of Thanksgiving Food to explore more about chemistry.
Fun Origami Activities
There are many fun origami activities that can be used to teach geometry. Here are a few ideas:
Origami 3D Nets
Students can fold three-dimensional nets into the actual shapes that they need to learn about. This is a great way to practice identifying the faces, edges, and vertices of different shapes.
Make Your Own Dice
Students can fold a three-dimensional cube that makes a large die. They can then use the die to play math games, such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication.
Animal Origami
Students can make fun, animal origami shapes and then do mathematical activities with them, such as measuring angles, counting triangles, and identifying different types of triangles.
Holiday Origami
Students can make cute Halloween and Thanksgiving origami and tell how many different shapes make up the figure.
Geometric Prisms
Students can use three-dimensional nets of cubes and rectangular prisms to learn more about the concept of volume. Once students make the shapes, they can fill them with centimeter cubes and count the cubes to determine the volume.
Student How-To Videos
Students can create their own origami how-to videos with accompanying directions and drawings. This is a great way to share their origami skills with others.
Infographics or Comic Strips
Students can think of ways that origami is related to geometry or math in general and share their ideas creatively, such as creating an infographic or comic strip.
Find the Area
Students can practice finding areas by tracing a three-dimensional net onto graph paper. They can then break the net down into manageable parts, calculate each part’s area, and add the parts together to figure the total area.
The most important thing is to have fun with origami! Students will love learning about geometry and math when they are having fun.
