Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Big Paper Snowflake

We get to enjoy making various types of snowflakes from October through April (hopefully not May...). This is one of our favorites.
We make one or two of these big beautiful snowflakes every year. You need 7 squares of paper, scissors, a pencil, and clear tape. We used white paper cut in 9" squares.
Fold in half to make a triangle, then in half again forming a smaller triangle.
With the open sides at the bottom, cut three lines, parallel to the long straight side, from the bottom, almost to the top (but do not cut through the top). Use the picture below as a guide. Draw first if that helps.
When you open it up, it should look like this. Now, repeat with the remaining 6 squares.
Now, you want to make each piece 3-dimensional. Take the top and bottom corner, bring them together and secure with clear tape. Then take the next top and bottom corners and bring them together on the opposite side and secure with tape. Looks like we started with the inside pieces...
It really does not matter how you start as long as you end up with seven pieces like the one pictured below.

Now line them up and tape the sides together so that they form a long line. We only have five lined up in the picture, just pretend there are seven.

Finally you want to tape the bottoms together so that it forms a round snowflake. As you can see, I took over at this point. It can be tricky getting the corners together.

These are beautiful in a classroom or a space that can accommodate a bunch especially if they are various sizes and colors.