This year we are doing a Christmas Countdown where we are making sure to do one Christmas activity a day. Right now my daughter is really loving the Origami Yoda series of books that include directions to make Origami characters, so I knew that Christmas origami would be a big hit.
Christmas Origami Instructions
A quick Pinterest search turned up an Origami-Club website which has directions for a number of Christmas origami projects. However, while the Origami Yoda projects are designed for standard sheets of paper (8.5×11), the Christmas ones that I found are designed for regular square origami paper and take advantage of one side having color and the other being white. Last Friday we were at Michael’s to buy a present and also bought a pack of Origami paper (p.s. do you have the Michael’s app on your phone- I had a 25% off purchase and a 50% off an item coupon I used from there).
Last night I browsed the Christmas Origami Website with my daughter and we selected several projects to test and printed out the directions. My daughter chose to make a wreath, a tree, a candy cane, and a Santa’s hat. I also added a Santa face. I love that the directions differentiate between the white side and the colored side of the paper to make sure that everything ends up in the right spot.
Candy Cane Origami
My daughter was able to do the projects mostly by herself. She did the Candy Cane completely on her own. We started with a red sheet of origami paper and it is folded so that the red and white alternate.
Christmas Wreath
Next we moved on to the Christmas Wreath which required cutting the paper in half and making two mirror image halves of the wreath. As my daughter called it, it was the Chase symbol in green. Next we had to add a ribbon to go on top. I missed the direction that called for using 1/4 sheet of paper for the bow. We ended up with a bow that was almost as big as our wreath. The direction to use 1/4 sheet was on the page that included links to the directions for the base wreath and the bow instead of on the directions for the bow itself. No big deal, we just folded a sheet in quarters and cut a 1/4 sheet to make a new ribbon and have an extra ribbon now.
Santa Origami
I wanted to make a Santa Face while my daughter wanted the hat. We decided to do both. I did the Santa Face which was pretty easy and drew on eyes and a nose.
My daughter worked on the Santa Cap and needed a little help at the end. As you can see, her initial lines weren’t perfectly symmetrical. So, we ended up with a little bit of the underside showing.
Christmas Tree
Finally we made a Christmas Tree. This was the only one where there was a step that completely confused me. Even after watching the animation provided, I was still confused about making the folds to form the base of the tree. I did the best that I could and think it came out fine. Initially, my daughter was planning to decorate the tree. Once she finished making it, she was ready to move on to LEGOs.
