Half term has just ended and its back to normal for a while, until the next school holiday. What to do with the little ones to keep them entertained has always been a tricky one. Sophie and I found a solution.
I'm quite good at making paper aeroplanes. A grown up (love that word) showed me when I was very young and I've never forgotten. My planes look like Concorde in shape and do actually fly like a dart, doing a loop the loop, with a bit of skill of course. Sophie is very good at getting them to fly over the sitting room beams and then make them land on the beams and we can't get them down, except with a long broom handle.
So we thought we'd go a step further and bend a few bits of paper in half and give our animal card characters another dimension. I always thought Origami (the ancient Japanese art of paper folding) was too hard, or tedious to try. But its actually really good fun, at least at our basic level.
All you need is a piece of paper cut to a square. Its easy for us, as all our cards are square. The easiest thing is get some A4 printer paper and either guillotine, or cut it down into a square. We then found some very easy to follow instructions on the web and hey presto we were in business with some little creature creations.
When you have made the basic shape of your creatures all you have to do is draw in the facial features of the animal you've made. Admittedly we went for the really easy ones, but you have to start somewhere. So we can now make a dog, a cat, a rabbit and a pig. The pig is actually the same as the dog, but you have to draw it in and make it look like a pig.
Do I have your attention so far? And are you sitting comfortably... then I'll begin. I am just going to show you how to make a dog today. We have modelled the dog on one our cards, Scruffy the dog.
I am only going to show you how to make the dog, because if I make the cat and the rabbit, it might be a little long and you'll probably fall asleep. If you like how we make the dog, please let me know and I'll do another blog with the rabbit and the cat. They are all pretty easy really and just variations on a theme.
First take your square piece of paper. Angle it so there's a bottom point and a top point, see below.
Fold the bottom to the top in half and crease. You have a triangle.
Fold in half again, the left side to the right side . You have another triangle.
Open the piece of paper out again and flip it around through 180 deg,so the long piece is at the top and pointy bit at the bottom.
Now to make the dogs ears bend the paper down at an angle on the left side slightly away from the halfway crease. Do the same on the right side. You should have two floppy dogs ears.
Then bend the front pointy bit at the bottom upwards and flat to create the mouth.Bend the tip of the triangle back again behind to create the top of the nose. Nearly done. Now bend backwards at the halfway crease to create the overall shape of the dog,
Lastly, start filling in your dogs features. Scruffy here always has a wet nose and his tongue out trying to catch his ball.
And that's it you're done. Here are some wacky creations we've done. Along with a few of the other animals. I hope you can guess what they are... we are still beginners!
It's really good and simple fun and you won't forget how to make these paper animals as they are very easy. You can also pass it on as a 'grown up' and score a few brownie points with some little ones you know at the next half term.