Origami Flowers Activity for Kids

Origami is a popular after-school program at my library. If we had the people-power, I could totally see this happening as a regular club. It stimulates the brain both logically and creatively, has endless possibilities (so. much. origami.), and is very low cost (just need paper—and not even just origami paper, but all different kinds you probably have laying around). Plus it's fun!

Obviously.

In our origami activities, we always have a few examples with varying levels of difficulty—start with the easiest and move on up. If kids can only do easy one—great, they can make a couple more while other kids try the harder ones. Also, the more people staffing the program the better because invariably, there will be participants who make a mistake or just need a little more one-on-one help. So it helps to have a couple roamers. Otherwise, have your group set up around your main lecturer/example-maker.

So without further ado here's some origami flowers!! Just in time for Valentines!

3D Drawing & Anaglyphs for Kids

This was an after school program that I put on for kids at my library.

Three Halloween Crafts & Stories

Happy Halloween! I'm going to be extra festive today. This here is a post with Halloween crafts and corresponding Halloween stories all in one! We had an awesome party at the library with stories and crafts as the main event.

Eric Carle Spotlight & Craft

At a recent youth librarian training conference, I got to see an awesome documentary on picture book author, Eric Carle. He's a brilliant author/illustrator who is most famously known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Here's a trailer for the documentary:

Eric Carle, Picture Writer: The Art of the Picture Book (Trailer for 32 minute short film) 

from Kate Geis on Vimeo.

If there is some way you can get your hands on this dvd, I would highly recommend it. Some libraries do carry it, or you can purchase it from Eric Carle's museum shop.

What I was most impressed by, in the end, was how simple his art really is. Anyone can do it. Especially kids! So I think we should try it out. There is a simplified slide show of how he does his work on his web page. He uses a razor to cut out the shapes of tissue paper he's painted. He then glues all the shapes together on some art board to create his characters.

We can take his method a variety of ways. If there's time, painting tissue paper all kinds of colors is really fun. After it dries, you then trace each shape and glue it all together.

But say you just have one storytime. Basically, it's time to cut out some colored tissue and make some fun collages.