ORIGAMI

ORIGAMI

Origami - video demonstration on how to fold a bird.

Travel to the world origami. Open the site then click Travel to Oriland.
A super site from ThinkQuest.

Oriland consists of seven cities in each you can learn the practical skills of origami, listen to a lecture and learn about the ancient and modern art of Origami.

Origami is the art of 'folding paper'. The word origami is a Japanese word meaning to fold paper - oru 'to fold' - and kami 'paper'. Origami is often described as the 'Japanese art of folding paper' but origami is a traditional art of not just Japan but of many other countries too, such as China and Korea.
Strung paper cranes at the base of the Children's Peace monument.

Alex Bateman's Origami

Origami Heaven

British Origami Society

Origami Three units: Modular origami (with triangle, pentagon, and Sonobe modular units); Tessellating origami (including weave tessellations, square twist, tessellation techniques, and triangular - expansion); and Mathematical origami (perimeter problem)

Origami Maths Information on origami and the mathematics of paper folding. With an origami math bibliography, pictures and tutorials in origami geometric construction, as well as links to other origami sites and events.

A good comprehensive site linking origami and maths.

Learn how to fold an Origami crane.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr may be ordered from Amazon.

Sadako Sasaki
The story of this little girl has become a classic - Sadako was a little child of two when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima where she lived. Unlike the majority of her family and friends, she survived the attack. Then, at the age of twelve she developed leukemia. She knew of the Japanese legend that if a sick person folds a thousand origami cranes then that person gets better so she began folding... but unfortunately she had only completed six hundred and forty four origami cranes when she died. She wrote of her cranes:

'I will write PEACE on your wings
and you will fly all over the world.'

Her friends continued to fold cranes in her memory and helped raise the money to build a monument to her in Peace Park in Hiroshima. Three years after her death the monument, now known as the Children's Peace Monument, was unveiled close to the spot where the atomic bomb was dropped.
The base of this monument is always covered with paper cranes made by children throughout the world who send their efforts to Hiroshima in the hope for world peace. The engraved inscription reads :-

THIS IS OUR CRY.
THIS IS OUR PRAYER.
PEACE IN THE WORLD.

I was at the Children's Peace Monument (Sadako's Monument) in Peace Park on the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I listened to a hibakusha - a survivor of the atomic bombing - painfully retell her experience

If any school or organisation would like to fold a thousand cranes - or as many as they can manage! as a symbol of their hope for world peace and send their cranes to Hiroshima please contact me via the feedback at the top of the page.
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