Origami boat

Simple origami is great for building your child's fine motor skills and self-esteem.  This simple origami boat can be made out of a standard sheet of A4 paper.

What you need:

• One sheet of A4 paper

Number of players:
1

Activity:

Click on the video link and watch an eight year old make the origami boat. It's that simple!  Just follow Alex's lead.

Put the sheet of paper on the table: short edges top and bottom, long edges to the sides.

Fold the piece of paper in half, top to bottom. Fold the paper again across the middle and open again.

Fold the corners in to meet at the centre fold mark. You should have about a third of the paper left at the bottom.

Of the leftover third, fold the corners of each sheet up to meet the folds above. Turn the paper over and fold the other corners up too.

Now fold the bottom third of the paper up over the top thid.

Open it out so it looks sort of like a pirate hat, turn it to the side and bring the two 'hat' edges together so the folded paper is reshaped to look like the beak of a bird.

Press the beak flat  to create a diamond shape.

On one half, fold the diamond up so that you create two triangles on top of each other. Do the same to the other side.

Pick it up, turn it around and fold it over itself again to create another smaller beak.  Press it down to create a flattened diamond shape.

There will be a split up the middle of the diamond. Take the top corners of the split, pull them outwards  to create the boat shape with a triangle in the middle.

• Thanks to our sister company Kidspot Australia for the instructional video.