Playing with Paper

Folding paper together with someone is a great way to build relationships and generate curiosity; folding together also fosters mathematical vocabulary and helps to deepen mathematical understanding.

For example, give someone a non-square piece of paper and ask them to create a square out of it while thinking out-loud. Then ask them how they know that the paper is "square".

There are many different types of origami, but we will feature some modular origami here. Modular origami consists of putting a number of identical pieces together to form a complete model.

The stellated icosohedron shown here is an example of modular origami. This model is made up of sonobe units. Here is a link to the How to Make a Stellated Icosohedron. Other models for this unit include a cube and an octahedron.