 Hi, my name is Miss Janine and I work at the Long Beach Public Library. I am excited that you're joining us for my Origami virtual program. This is part of our Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month series. The series will run from May 1st to the 29th where we'll be highlighting Asian and Pacific Islander culture, food, stories, and more. So today's virtual program is going to be on origami. And before I go any further, I'd like to just go ahead and show the meaning of the word. This is origami. Ori means folding and gami means paper. So it's like folding paper. This craft is pretty fun and it's really easy to do. Origami in general is easy to do as well because you don't need any scissors, you don't need any glue, you're not cutting much. There are some origami crafts out there that do sometimes bring in scissors and glue, but for the most part, traditional origamis are supposed to be folded with just one square sheet of paper usually without this side so all the edges are the same. So for today, I thought we would go ahead and fold the paper crane. So as you can see, we have a lot of paper cranes in front of me right here. And the reason why I wanted to go ahead and do the paper crane was because the crane has a very special meaning, especially in Japan. The actual living bird, the crane, represents a long and happy life in Japan. And so back in the day, traditionally during ceremonies like weddings, you would actually have folded paper cranes to represent a long and happy life for the married couple. And they usually would string up a thousand of these, a thousand gold paper cranes on a string, and they would string them up usually on a blank tree, basically a tree with no leaves, and they would go ahead and dangle them all around the tree. Now this is only five. I would have 995 more cranes to to go ahead and fold and string up. So because the crane is actually a symbol of longevity or very long and healthy life, it became very symbolic to a little girl named Sadako Sasaki. She grew up in Hiroshima during the World War II bombing. And when she was two, the bombing happened. And then when she was 12 years old, she got diagnosed with leukemia. And they told her that it was going to be a terminal illness, so she probably wouldn't make it past the year. But so she noticed that, you know, holding paper cranes or having paper cranes represents a long and healthy life in hopes of, you know, living a lot longer than she did. She was hoping she actually strung up and or folded a thousand paper cranes and strung it up around her hospital room. She might even live a longer life than she expects. So her classmates used to her classmates saw that or heard about that and they actually helped her fold 1500 paper cranes and strung them all around her hospital bed in her string from the ceilings. And so it was a pretty spectacular room, like if you can imagine lots of colorful paper cranes all over the place. But unfortunately she did pass away. She didn't really make it past 12 years old. And so because of that, because of her, you know, efforts to try and, you know, live a longer and happy life, especially as a Hiroshima bomb survivor, she hopes she did hope that a lot of other children would actually survive past the time that she did. So with that in mind, Japan actually created this monument in honor of children's children's peace monument. They call it and it's actually in Hiroshima. And at the top of that monument is actually a basically a rendering or a sculpture represents Sadako and she's actually holding a paper crane or folded wire crane on top. This monument was actually open on Children's Day which is May 5th 1958 and it actually became a symbol of peace for children all over the world. Now that we've gone through the history of origami let's go ahead and start folding. So what you're going to want to have with you to do the origami paper crane is a square sheet of paper. That means all four sides are the same. And you're going to go ahead and turn it into a diamond type square where you have a point facing you. So what you're going to go ahead and do is go ahead and fold diagonally so you'll match and you'll make a triangle. And you're going to go ahead and open it up and then you're going to go ahead and do another fold the diagonally the other way. Matching up the corners and you're going to go ahead and open it up and on the white side you're going to go ahead and fold it horizontally. Go ahead and match the edges. You'll open it back up again and now you're going to fold vertically and do the same. You'll go ahead and open this up and with the white side of the paper you're going to go ahead and face the white side up. You're going to take these three corners and bring them to this corner. It may seem tricky but don't worry so you'll take the top corner bring it down here and you notice these parts are more open so you'll go ahead and crease it in and reverse fold it inside. Then you can do the same for the other side like so. And now you have a smaller square. Then what you're going to do is you're going to bring this side your right and your left side closest to you and you're going to fold this edge to the center. So you're going to do this bring the edge to the center and you'll do the same for this side. So you're kind of making a kite shape kite like shape. Once you have the kite you'll go ahead and fold this point backwards this triangle shape backwards like so. Now you're going to go ahead you have a sharp triangle it looks like. You'll go ahead and unfold all the past three folds that you made like that. Now this one is definitely tricky. You're going to go ahead and take this bottom layer this point right here and push it upwards. Remember that crease that we made. This crease is very helpful in creating this fold. So you will create basically a longer diamond shape like so. Sometimes it might not cooperate but it's okay take your time. You'll go ahead and repeat it on the other side. So once again you'll take this bottom corner and then lift up all the way to create a longer diamond shape like so. And now what you'll go ahead and do is make sure the two legs they're separated not the one that isn't separated up top here. One with two legs have it facing you and you're going to bring this side to the center. So this edge just like before you'll make it look like that and then you'll do the same for this side. It'll look like that. Then you'll flip it over and do the same like so. So you'll have an even sharper diamond. Then what you're going to do with the two legs you're going to take one side and you're going to fold it upwards like so to the side just a little off angle and then you'll do the same with the other side. Then this might be a little tricky as well but you'll go ahead and unfold it and then you're going to open up this this crease here and you're going to push on this side upwards and they call this an inverse reverse fold. You'll fold at this crease right here. Then you'll go ahead and do it on the other side. So open it up put your thumb right in here so that you can go ahead and make the reverse fold like so and then it kind of looks like you have a w. Then as you can see these are going to be the wings but one of these is going to be the head or the tail of the crane. You can choose whichever side you like. It doesn't really matter because they're both the same side, the same type of fold. So in order to make the head you'll go ahead and do similar to what we did to flatten out and open it up and do a reverse fold for the head. So you'll go ahead and flatten up here and then try and reverse the fold at the top of the head like so. Then as you can see these are the wings. You can keep the wings up if you'd like but you can also fold them down as well like so and there you have a paper crane. Thank you for joining us for this origami virtual program. If you are interested in learning more about the history of origami or about Sadako or wanting to learn any new origami folding projects, you can always check our website or in our catalog and you can go ahead and request them and then check them out to yourself and go ahead and pick them up at any of the to-go locations. All right we'll definitely check all of our events that we have for the rest of the month and we'll see you next time.