Foldables Make Great Lessons

Many of us have probably made a foldable of something in a classroom in our lifetime, but today there are so many patterns available on the internet that it is a lot more interesting. In math class there are the possibilities of making tetrahedrons, icosahedrons, octahedrons, cubes, dodecahedrons, hexagonal and many other mathematical patterns. There are patterns to convert a small envelope into a tetrahedron (Enchanted Learning) on the internet. I have used software that would let you make buildings, villages, towns etc. which are great for social studies classes.

Some of the foldables can be quite large and require very big pieces of paper or cardboard. Your school may have large rolls of paper that can be used to make large foldables. There was a concept (myth) that you could not fold any square piece of paper more than 7 times no matter how big the piece of paper that was used was originally. This is now a confirmed myth by "Mythbusters" (TM) which was able to show with a very thin piece of paper the size of an airplane hanger that more than 7 folds were possible. Still in class I have given one student a square piece of paper that measured about 8 x 8 inches and another student a piece of paper that measured 80 x 80 and had each fold the paper as many times as they could. They could only get to 7 and possibly with great effort one more. It made a fun class observation. Many students have now seen this myth busted on television (which gives you the chance to bring in the background of the student into the lesson).

Foldable patterns like the math ones can also be used to represent the patterns of crystals and make a great science lesson. One teacher had sheets of paper that could be folded and put together to produce a world globe. It ended up not looking perfectly round, but you could tell what it represented. Folding paper airplanes is of course a foldable. Recently thousands of paper airplanes were dropped from a very high altitude to see how they would fly toward the earth. Origami is the art of folding paper and there have been some fantastic examples in this area of art. Think big and small not just regular paper size with respect to foldable patterns.

For young children I have found that generally the pieces need to be bigger and much of the cutting needs to be done in advance. When I worked with fourth grade students they often had more difficulty cutting out patterns. They really enjoyed making paper towns and villages. Fifth graders seemed to do quite a bit better at the process. Because there is a lot of waste generated from cutting out patterns you may still want to do a big part of the cutting in advance simply to keep the room neater. I also found that the tabs on many patterns needed to be increased in size to make it easier for students to fold and glue. Sometimes a bit of scotch tape was needed to hold everything in place while the other glue would dry. There are paper patterns on the internet of famous places like London Bridge, Monuments, and Castles. These are often pretty complex paper foldables and if printed in color will use a lot of paper and ink. I have seen paper animals that were so nice they could be given as gifts.

Use safety scissors with young children and glue sticks rather than hot glue. You can make bigger patterns by enlarging the pattern on a photocopier that can increase the size proportionally.