Making Maths: Five-point Snowflake

Stage: 2 Challenge Level:

Snowflakes shows how to fold a circle of paper into a six-point snowflake. Just for something different, here's how to fold a five-point snowflake from a square of paper. This method was shared by a Japanese teacher named Kazuyuki Asanuma.

You will need:

A square piece of paper
Scissors

What to do:

Fold a square of paper in half to make a triangle, then half again. Open out the last fold. This centre fold line will help you keep the next fold straight.
Fold the top flap down to touch the bottom and then unfold it again.
Fold the tip of the flap down again, this time just to the fold you made in step 2. Unfold it again and make sure you can see the two points marked with red dots below.
Fold the corners up as shown below to meet the red dots.
Turn the whole shape over, then fold the left corner across as shown below. Then fold the right corner over on top it.
You now have five flaps around a centre point. If you opened it out to the first triangle you folded, it would look like this.

But keep it folded and try cutting shapes out of the edges to make snowflakes with five or ten points. Make sure you cut the top corners off, or when you unfold it, you will just end up with the square you started with.

becomes

This activity features in our December 2008 Advent Calendar.