Tammy Yee's easy print and fold origami, crafts and educational articles make learning fun! Paper folding instructions, diagrams and craft ideas for the holidays.
My new book, Easy Butterfly Origami features 30 bold full-color patterns designed to accurately portray the dorsal and ventral sides of some of the most beautiful butterflies from around the world!
Origami Folding Tips
Origami, from the Japanese ori (to fold) and kami (paper), began in the 6th century when Buddhist monks introduced paper to Japan. The print-and-fold crafts and easy diagrams are designed to help children with fine motor skills, directions and hand eye coordination.
Some basic origami folding tips:
Print and cut out patterns carefully.
Fold with clean, dry hands.
Follow the instructions. Study the diagrams and be patient.
Be precise: fold each crease well, flattening the creases by running your fingertip over the fold.
Folding the paper away from you is easier than folding towards you.
Be creative...use your origami on greeting cards, holiday decorations, table place cards and bookmarks.
Halloween is around the corner, so you'd think that this is a Photoshopped image of a toad ready for a night of Trick-or-Treating in his bat costume.
Except this is not an altered image. This photo was taken by park ranger Yufani Olaya at a remote guard station in Peru's Cerros de Arnotape National Park. In an interview with Rainforest Expeditions (blog.perunature.com), Olaya says that "out of nowhere the bat just flew directly into the mouth of the toad, which almost seemed to be sitting with its mouth wide open."
The mountainous Cerrros de Arnotape National Park, where Olaya took the photo, is spread out over 90,000 hectares. The park's geography features a combination of dry tropical forests and zones, arid zones, and Andean mountain range ecosystems that support a tremendous amount of biodiversity such as Andean condors, spotted cats, red deer, gray deer, anteaters, spectacled bears, Guayaquil squirrels and scarlet macaws.
To learn why the bat may have been flying so close to the ground, and what happened to it, read the full article at Rainforest Expeditions.
Granular Poison Dart Frog, Costa Rica, by Sean Crane
The vibrant colors of these tiny frogs is a clear signal: Predators Beware!
Found in the hot and humid rainforests of Central and Latin America, these frogs have been used for centuries by Amerindian tribes in Columbia to coat the tips of blowgun darts and arrows. A steady diet of toxic insects, such as ants, is what makes these frogs lethal.
Some, like the Golden Poison Dart (or Arrow) Frog, are so deadly that the poison from a single frog, entering through cuts or contact with the mouth, can kill ten people!
There are more than 100 species of poison dart frogs. An inch to two and a half inches long, these dynamos hunt for spiders, ants and termites on the forest floor. When it is time to mate, the male attracts a female with a chorus of shrill chirps. After mating, the female lays her eggs, which are coated in thick gelatin to prevent them from drying out, on moist leaves.
When the eggs hatch, the male will carry his clutch of tadpoles down from the trees and deposit them into a small pond or the water-filled center of a bromeliad. There the tadpoles will remain until they're ready to sprout legs and morph into little frogs, ready to hop away on their own. Sometimes the female will return to feed her youngsters with unfertilized eggs.
1. Print frog origami and cut out image along outer solid lines.
2a. With printed side down, fold along diagonal line.
2b. Unfold and repeat the diagonal fold on other side.
2c. Unfold and fold back along horizontal line.
3a. Unfold. Your origami should be creased as illustrated.
3b. Carefully fold along creases forming a "tent" as illustrated.
4a. Fold the right "tent" corner up to the "peak" as illustrated.
4b. Repeat on the other side. These flaps will form the frog's front legs.
5a. Fold left side over to the midline.
5b. Fold right side over to the midline.
6a. Fold bottom up along the solid line as illustrated.
6b. Fold down along second solid line. This will form the hind legs.
6c. Fold front legs forward along dashed lines as illustrated.
The Surinam toad is one nature's most unusual creatures. It's actually a frog, which spends its entire life cycle in tropical South American rivers and canals.
With its flattened body and triangular head, it can easily be mistaken for leafy debris while waiting patiently for a meal to swim by--unsuspecting fish, worms and bugs are sucked into its large mouth with surprising speed.
What makes them unique is their reproduction. After the female lays her pea-sized eggs, the male places them on her back and pushes them into her spongy skin. The eggs incubate as mom's new skin slowly develops and covers them, keeping them safe and out of sight.
Eventually the eggs hatch inside the skin pockets, and the babies develop through the tadpole stage. In 70 to 120 days, fully formed froglets pop out of mom's back!
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