The Pangea Pop Up by Michael Molina and Ted-Ed

The Pangea Pop Up by Educator Michael Molina and animated by the Ted-Ed Team.

I love the simple and elegant integration of sound geological science with great pop up book tecnology. Paper Engineering does seem to have a magical ability to engage with children's imaginations and learning.

I have spent the last 20 years working with children of all ages and abilites, exploring their creativity through the medium of children's picture and pop up books. There is something about pop up books that really engages with children's creativity.
I have found that they are a great medium to engage with children's creativity and learning through what feels like play. I see the most wonderful creations on my school visits and I am always delighted when a child, not normally known for their creativity, or lacking in self confidence, creates something really unexpected and amazing!  I have had some fun, let me tell you!

It's well worth visiting the Ted-Ed lesson that accompanies this great pop up science book. You will learn more about the geology and have that information presented in a simple and clear fashion. I learnt a lot!

Click here for the Ted-Ed Pangea Pop Up Lesson 

The paper engineering was created by Yevgeniya Yeretskaya, who has some more great pop up books and pop up paper card ideas, as well as more great pop up book videos on her website yaypapercuts.com 

Free Paper Lanterns

Simple Free Paper Craft Lanterns

Really easy kid's paper craft activity.
A single sheet of A4 card, folded in half and cut. They are delightfully bouncy!
You could try making small ones to use with Christmas Lights.
I created one with a colour changing LED and it looked so cool!

Free Paper Lantern Template after the break!

Curved Folds - Free Curved Folding Template

Curved Folding

Paper fold lines don't have to straight.
Try scoring a curved line and see what you can do, they can be a little bit difficult to fold but the results are very beautiful and often unexpected.
These are from the Curved Fold group on Flickr.

Free curved folding template below, good luck!

Jun Mitani - Paper Magician

Jun Mitani - Paper Magician

Jun Mitani: I’m an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Tsukuba. My specialty is geometric modeling in the field of computer graphics. I have been studying algorithms and user interfaces for generating 3D shapes on a computer.
When did your fascination with origami begin? Did you fold a lot of origami when you were a child?
When I was a kid, I didn’t have much interest in folding origami, but in papercraft. I fabricated a lot of paper models, such as cars, ships, buildings, and animals, etc. by cutting and gluing pieces of paper. I felt that origami, just folding, was too restricted. On the other hand, I was enthusiastic about the computer, which my father bought when I was a first-year student in elementary school. As a fusion of two objects of interest, papercraft and computer, the theme of my Ph.D. thesis became a method for designing paper models with the computer.