Origami

Origami is the art of folding squares of paper. Projects may be made of one or more sheets of paper, with the pieces folded and held together without the use of glue, tape, or string. One of the most popular models is the paper crane.

Origami is basically a Japanese art where "oru" meaning "folding" and "kami" meaning "paper". The art was originally developed by the Chinese, but later spread to the Japan because the Japanese started producing paper more efficiently and hence their paper was a lot cheaper than that produced by the Chinese. Slowly the art spread across the world and written instructions were produced in the form of books. Today, a lot of material is easily available in the internet.

In education, origami can be used in primary grades for art and geometry lessons without any stretch of the imagination. Grade school students are able to learn and fold very well (although there are plenty of advanced and complex techniques to keep people interested all their life). In addition, it's certainly a useful topic in any cultural study of Japan, though it is also an interesting part of Chinese and Spanish history as well. A teacher who likes origami would have no problem working something into any school subject.

Practicing origami has frequently been shown to help develop spatial skills and other cognitive processes.

Origami folds
Almost all origami books use an internationally known set of symbols which are well represented elsewhere. Here are a few of the most important ones:

Examples

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