Tutorial for the August Flower: Easy origami tutorial for kids

Come August and it rains all around, 

Splish and Splash and Splosh...

We hear it lashing against the windows,

We enjoy the smell of wet mud.

The wind goes roaring,

It gets cold and dark,

As rain falls pitter patter...

We come to India during our vacations in the UAE during the month of August and end up being stuck indoors due to heavy rainfall in almost every part of the country. The cable television connection is also disrupted due to heavy rainfall. So what do we do now? My child questions me. I search for some paper or any craft material I may have stocked years ago in our drawers and find some deep red colored chart paper and some black colored chart paper. Next what? The paper I found was a little damaged at corners, some part of it was damp due to rains. So we cut out all the damaged portion and decided to do some experimentation with origami. Since the paper was of thick quality, it was not possible to make many folds, so I decided to make something that would require minimum folds and would be easy for my kid to handle also. Once done, we named it 'the August Flower' after the month of August since we made it this month.

Here is the tutorial showing kids how to make the unit and assemble it step by step. It is modular origami but doesn't involve any complex folding and is also easy to assemble, just follow the steps closely.

Materials used: 8 square sheets of paper of size 8cm x 8cm cut out from a chart paper. Glue for the assembly.

Step 1: Start with a square sheet of paper

Step 1: Take a square sheet of paper and fold it in half diagonally to get a crease at the center.

Step 2: Fold in both the sides 

 Step 2: Now fold in both the sides

Step 3: Fold in both the sides to meet the center.
Make 8 such units.

Step 3: Fold in both the sides to meet at the center crease as shown.  One of the unit for the flower pattern is ready.  You can also glue both the flaps, I didn't.

Make 8 such units for the final assembly. 

Step 4: Overlap one unit over the other

 Step 4: Overlap one unit over the other as shown above. Keep glueing the units as you add them one over the other.

Step 5: All units are assembled 

Step 5: Keep overlapping one unit over the other till you are done with all 8 units as shown in the above picture. 

Step 6: Turn over the entire assembly to get the final pattern

Step 6: Now turn over the entire assembly and the August Flower Pattern is ready.

A Ganesha cutout glued at the centre of the flower pattern

Final touches: We took a little Ganesha cut out from an old wedding card and glued it at the centre of the flower piece. A beautiful home decor piece now adorns the wall of our room.

Suggestion: You can use thin paper instead of chart paper. Gift wrappers would be a beautiful alternative. You can use this for home decor purpose or for party decorations too.