Origami And Folded Paper | Origami And Folded Paper Guide

The start of the school year brings fun opportunities for classroom decoration via Halloween projects. While it may be impractical to involve your students in all aspects of seasonal and holiday classroom decorating, including a few fun projects for them to do spreads the task around and fosters their sense of pride and ownership in the classroom.

Flying Origami Bats

The traditional Japanese art of origami, or paper folding, is a fun way to create classroom decorations while providing a lesson for students in following directions, reading comprehension and fine motor skills. The key is to find instructions that are simple to understand and to provide your students with a visual example. You can find good, clear instructions showing you how to make a simple origami bat via a YouTube Video. The link for the video will be listed at the end of the article.

For this Halloween project, start with square paper of varying sizes and patterns. Use construction paper to make large black and orange bats. If you have patterned wrapping paper or scrapbooking paper, use it to make smaller bats. The contrast between solid and patterned papers will make the finished Halloween project more dynamic. While any type of paper will work, keep in mind that multiple folding will make thicker papers more difficult for little hands.

Once the origami bats are made, it's time to hang them up. Attach fishing line, which gives the bats the appearance of flying, to the bats using clear tape and then hang them from the classroom ceiling or from the top of a window.

Lunch Bag Jack-O-Lanterns

Lunch bag jack-o-lanterns are a simple Halloween project for students of all ages. This fun and easy Halloween project requires lunch bags, orange paint, green ribbon or pipe cleaners, newspaper and construction paper.

Begin by painting the lunch bags with bright orange paint. While they are drying, cut out simple shapes for leaves from green construction paper. Use a hole punch to punch a single hole at one end of each leaf.

When the paint dries, students can stuff each lunch bag with crumpled newspaper and then roll up a piece of brown construction paper to use as a stem and fasten the roll with tape. Put the stem part-way into the top of the lunch bag and fasten the top of the bag tightly with green ribbon or a green pipe cleaner.

Show your students that more pipe cleaners can be wound around pencils to create curling vines for the top of the pumpkin. Slide the green leaves with the holes on one end onto the end of the ribbon or pipe cleaner. Then, fasten the curling vines to the lunch bag and arrange the leaves.

The last step is to create a jack-o-lantern face. Using black or yellow construction paper, cut out shapes for the eyes, nose, mouth and any other facial feature your students would like, and glue them to the front of the pumpkin lunch bag.

Classroom decoration tends to revolve around holiday celebrations and seasonal changes. These easy projects are not only fun, but shall create classroom pride amongst all your students.