Parenting and home schooling

Trying out Tuttle’s Origami Made Easy Kit

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I don’t consider myself a natural in arts and crafts, but I enjoy doing them whenever I have time to do so. Why not? They’re fun and most often than not, they’re relaxing to do. When you’re a mom, being able to relax and have fun with your kiddos is always welcome.

Our 7-year old Lukas has done some really cool Origami work in his Tuesday Art class. He’s come home with a simple bird once and I’m pretty sure a bird Origami isn’t as easy to make as a paper boat. He seemed to like it a lot so I thought it would be fun to get us a beginners’ Origami set to do together.

place-holder
Place Card Holder

Origami Made Easy

I decided to try Origami Made Easy from Tuttle (Thanks Tuttle!). You can’t go wrong with “made easy” on the box, right? I’m pretty much a newbie so the words I look for in labels are “for beginners,” “made easy” and “for dummies, haha!

Origami Made Easy comes with decorative and plain pre-cut folding papers and a comprehensive guide book filled with projects and illustrations. And if the illustrations are not enough, you can check out the tutorials they have uploaded on YouTube.

Here, I made an unboxing video to show you what’s included in the box:

Starting with a Place Card Holder

I tried making a Place Card Holder, the first project in the guide book. I thought it would be best to try it first myself before I asked the kids to join me because I wasn’t sure I could do it. The place card seemed easy enough and I was able to follow the instructions on the book.

I then called Lukas to join me and he wanted to make a bird. But in the middle of it, I learned that the more complex Origami sculptures require that you learn the basic folds and bases first.

lukas-origami

The book included it but I found it easier to follow the instructions on their tutorial videos on YouTube. I’m usually okay with instructional manuals but I guess I felt pressured to make the bird quicker because Lukas was looking to me to help him out.

My bird turned out okay, although I can’t get it to flap its wings properly.

Pablo, my 11-year old, wanted to to try it, too, and decided to follow the instructions on how to make a box and a table with me. They were pretty easy and we were both happy with our output.

Pablo-origami-box
Making boxes with my 11-year old Pablo

Our 5-year old Judah, on the other hand, needed more help than his two older siblings. I also started him off with the box because it’s the simplest to do among all the projects in the book. Later on, we made star-shaped ones.

We filled the Origami boxes up with snacks afterwards.

judah-origami
Our 5-year old Judah trying his best to follow daddy’s lead

Easy enough?

Doable. Like I said above, since I’m a beginner, I find it so much easier to follow the tutorial vids more than the manual it came along with.

I’m assuming that once you’ve gotten the hang of it and you’ve learned all the basic folds and stuff, you can probably let go of the videos and just refer to the manual from time to time since you’re already familiar with the different folds and all that. Otherwise, the illustrations may get confusing especially if you’re like me who just scanned the part where they explained what the symbols mean, hahaha!

This kid’s getting it! #Origami #Tuttle @tuttlepublishing #crafts #himeschooling

A photo posted by May De Jesus-Palacpac (@fullyhousewifed) on

Benefits of Origami

It may be a bit more challenging for tiny hands, but I think that if you slow it down with your Kindergartner, he just might get it. The kids’ output will depend on how well their hand and eye coordination and their fine motor skills have developed.

Judah still needs a bit more work in his fine motor skills so we needed to lend him a hand throughout the process.

Speaking of development, this intricate paper sculpture making often associated with Japanese Kirigami art, is said to offer many health benefits including “development of eye and hand co-ordination, improvement of sequencing skills, attention skills, patience, temporal spatial skills, math reasoning, among others. It is even said to activate the larger portion of the brain.” (Source: www.origamiwithrachelkatz.com)

Reading through its benefits, and the list is quite long if you check the link I provided above, I think I want to do more of this with my kids, most particularly Judah.

To be honest, I’m going to do it for me, too. Sitting quietly at the dining table as I folded paper was therapeutic for me, haha.

If you want to try Origami Made Easy, too, you can purchase directly from Tuttle Publishing, order from Amazon, or you can try Power Books. I think I saw a kit at their branch in BGC.

Happy folding!

Disclaimer: I have been provided with Origami Made Easy Kit by Tuttle Publishing for review, but all insights and opinions are mine.

34 Comments

  • Macy Santos

    January 3, 2017 at 12:52 pm Reply

    I remember my high school days when Origami was such a big thing back then especially when impressing your crush.Glad this art is reintroduced now and I agree it has benefits. Thanks for sharing.

  • Cris Ruffolo

    January 3, 2017 at 3:54 pm Reply

    May, I never had patience with origami. Hehehe. I usually do the storytelling part and my brother does the origami. There’s a storytelling technique called storygami (or was that storigami) and I never learned it. Tamad lang. Hehe.

    • May De Jesus-Palacpac

      January 4, 2017 at 12:23 am Reply

      Oooh,I’m going to look Storigami up. Thanks for the info, Cris. And for the record, if it weren’t for the kids, I wouldn’t be doing Origami now haha. I couldn’t even fold a decent boat back then.

  • Liz Alberto

    January 3, 2017 at 5:27 pm Reply

    Kudos to your patience! I’m not really a fan of folding papers, I just like to look at them when its folded na. Haha! I’ll show this to my tween, we’ll see if she’ll like it.

  • Berlin

    January 3, 2017 at 7:11 pm Reply

    My firstborn is into origami. And I could see his real enthusiam and happiness while folding those colorful papers. He even helped us decorate our small house with his stars origami during his little brother’s christening. It is nice and heartwarming to see your whole family being involved doing origami.

  • Lhourdes Mercadero

    January 4, 2017 at 1:13 am Reply

    My husband is good with this one Ms.May pero ako Di talaga ako marunong but I’ll watch the video and see kung kaya ko gumawa and isusuprise ko si Mike.?
    Thank you for this post Ms.May

  • Above Precious Rubies

    January 4, 2017 at 9:49 am Reply

    Why do I feel nostalgic about this post? haha. We used to do origami back in HS, now I’m thinking, why did we stop doing that? lol. Now I don’t even know if I still know how to do one. lol. Oh, I do! Airplanes and boats. haha.

  • Juvy ann

    January 4, 2017 at 9:30 pm Reply

    I have tried origami as a bonding activity with my children. They liked it a lot in thr beginning, but slowly looses interests. Maybe I should try easier patterns next time.

  • Ma.Me.Mi.Mommy

    January 7, 2017 at 8:47 am Reply

    I’ve tried origami with the kids before but the kids lost interest because I was taking a long time doing it. Haha! I really should practice first so I can better teach it to them. I agree that videos are indeed quicker in helping us out that reading manuals.

  • TweenselMom

    January 8, 2017 at 8:22 pm Reply

    I once bought an origami kit, yung pang isang taon which only proved na ang compulsive buyer ko dati. Hindi sya madali in fairness ha. Nice works and ok sya kasi you get to bond with each other while working on the craft. But this one requires patience and interest talaga sa craft 🙂

  • Melisa Sanchez

    January 8, 2017 at 8:40 pm Reply

    I love doing Origani arts, when I was a high school in our Home Economics subject our teacher taught us about paper Origani. We do flower vase, flowers, butterflies and more. It helps also to forget your problems and keep you busy.

  • Janice

    January 8, 2017 at 11:01 pm Reply

    Loved trying origami with my kids too. We actually have another box from Tuttle that we have yet to try. This just reminded me that we have to do a review of that already. Haha!

  • Michelle

    January 9, 2017 at 1:56 am Reply

    I honestly never tried making an origami in my entire life, ever! Hanggang airplane and boat lang ang na-achieve ng kamay ko. Hahaha! But I agree, I think it’s fun and therapeutic activity. Feeling ko kung ita-try ko s’ya, mapapractice ang isip ko na magfocus on just one thing at a time. Hihi

  • Liz A

    January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am Reply

    I love origami as a kid. I do remember doing the simple ones back in kindergarten class :D. I also have a godmother who used to live in Japan and gave us a few packs of origami paper (the small ones) with really cute designs. My mom didn’t want us to use it for practicing the art! LOL! Once my son learns to sit patiently and follow more complex instructions, I will definitely introduce origami to him. 🙂

  • Neri Ann

    January 9, 2017 at 8:45 am Reply

    I love doing origami’s! Meron pang mga magagandang origami patterns na pwedeng gawin na makakabuo ka ng isang malaking project. I remembered planning to do an origami christmas tree for our christmas design sa office pero nahirapan ako hehehe. I ended up doing a small version instead.

  • Jerzee Benavente

    January 12, 2017 at 9:19 pm Reply

    That’s a nice bonding time you had there. I’m not a crafty person too. I can only make a simple paper plane and boat and nothing else. Lol! But, the kids specially Aeon like doing stuff with paper. So, I think this would be a good activity for him.

  • mhaan.a-ds

    January 15, 2017 at 8:13 am Reply

    This sounds weird but I never tried it when I was still in school. All I know is how to make paper boat and airplane. Origami ba yun hehehe. I want to try this kit to share with my son.

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