Origami Classes

“A chilly Sunday morning…lots of used A4 sheets in one hand…color-boxes in the other…where the hell are you going ??”…that’s what an acquaintance in my society asked me when we met at the society gate. I just smiled back. The mission was to revive the arts and craft classes at Project Jaagriti.

So we reached there at Open Skies site and found the class going on as expected. The attendance was good and the excitement quite evident when the kids spotted us. A hearty ‘Good Morning’ welcomed us and erased all my doubts about whether the kids will be excited about this class or not. We quickly made the kids sit in circles and assigned one volunteer to each group to help them. One of the kids took the paper and got his pencils ready as he thought we are going to paint something. He was puzzled when he was told that we are going to make something using only paper.

Origami, the art of paper-folding, has been on our mind for some time for the project. What can be more interesting than witness a useless-looking paper turn into a bird or a frog or just about anything under the sun? So for our first class we chose a simple yet interesting shape … a jaw-snapping dinosaur (http://www.origami-club.com/en/fun/wiggle/index.htm). As the dinosaur took shape fold-by-fold, the kids’ excitement was a treat to watch. Even the coloring part was fun, with someone drawing as many as two pairs of eyes on his dinosaur!!

As we continue to dig the internet for more interesting origami, a word of caution to others who plan to conduct such sessions with kids: The number of pages missing from kids’ notebooks is directly proportional to the quality of Origami classes!!

Happy Volunteering!!

Ankit