The other day, my 6-year-old stumbled upon an origami book on our bookshelf. As he looked through it, the paper balloons intrigued him. He immediately set to work on trying to fold his own. And after a few tries and some help from me in interpreting some of the more complicated portions of the instructions, he was able to fold a paper balloon on his own.

For him, this was an exciting project that allowed him to transform a plain, flat square of paper into an exciting, three-dimensional object simply by folding it. As I watched, I saw a whole host of other things going on.

Origami takes patience. It’s not always easy to figure out how to make a particular type of fold. You need to follow the steps carefully, and work them in the order described in order to yield the desired shape. You have to focus as well as be neat and accurate as you work. Origami requires very precise folding, which develops eye-hand coordination as well as fine motor skills. Sloppy folding often means your end product won’t be quite right, and might not turn out at all. Because of this, origami also takes practice, and becoming skilled requires persistence. It also enforces the fact that making mistakes is part of learning a new skill (and sometimes these mistakes turn into happy discoveries – a slight variation may yield a different, but equally enjoyable result).

Origami encourages mindfulness by requiring you to focus exclusively on the project at hand. If you get distracted, as my 6-year-old often did, your balloons don’t turn out well. If you concentrate on what you’re doing to the exclusion of the excitement around you (even when your little brother is dancing up a storm in the other room), you can come up with an amazing final product. It also encourages a quiet and calm focus. It would be hard to be too rambunctious while you are folding origami; to the contrary, it’s a good way to let tensions melt away as you work on a fun project.

Origami also teaches math skills through concrete observation. While my son was working on his project, he made the following observations and asked me to confirm this fact for him: “A square folded into quarters is still a square.” “A square folded in half [this way] makes a rectangle.” “Mama, is ¼ of ¼ 1/16?” It also develops spatial reasoning as you transform a flat piece of paper into a three-dimensional object. It also teaches symmetry, as well as encouraging the manipulation of basic geometric shapes.

Origami is fun, easy (well, the beginning shapes are easy – they can get super complex!), simple to take along for on-the-go fun, enjoyable to share as gifts or decorations, you can get results fairly quickly, and it’s something you can do with your child or with a friend that allows you both to focus on an entertaining project together. And it can induce smiles and laughs – just try putting a silly folded paper hat on your head, or watching your 6-year-old contort his mouth in order to inflate a paper balloon without wetting the paper, and not at least cracking a smile

You can find oragami paper HERE (this one even comes with some basic projects).  The book we have is now out of print, but it’s similar to THIS.