Star War-igami

I started to include this in the last post, but I felt that maybe this warranted its own entry.

Another development that I can't believe I haven't written about yet is that Jack is currently obsessed with origami.  This started at the end of summer.  Violet's name was picked in a raffle that capped our local library's summer reading program.  This is actually the second time her name has been picked in the last three years.  When I was scoping out the prizes available for the winners to choose, I had my eye on a frisbee golf set for our backyard.  But by the time I actually found out that she had won (they had e-mailed an account I rarely check rather than calling the way they had in previous years), the only prize left that I thought anyone in our family would like was a book called "Art2-D2's Guide to Folding and Doodling: An Origami Yoda Activity Book" by Tom Angleberger.

It is amazing the speed to which Jack has taken to this book in particular and to origami in general.  From the moment he opened it, he has been obsessed with making the Star Wars origami projects and drawing the figures that this book describes.  

He was so funny.  One time he mused aloud, "I wonder when I started getting into origami?"  

I told him I could tell him the exact second he started getting into origami.

He has us looking up instructions on the Internet for projects he would like to build.  He is so into it that Tom and I folded the Tooth Fairy's first two dollars to him as TIE fighters as a sort of consolation for the chintziness of his windfall.
 
The downside of this new hobby is that he generates even more paper mess than ever before.  He has always loved drawing and writing lists.  We have reams and reams of paper that have been home to lists of numbers and wished-for Lego sets, as well as hundreds of drawings of Thomas trains, Angry Birds, Star Wars, and Star Wars Angry Birds characters.  Knowing how quickly he was going through paper, my parents gifted us with two large boxes filled with the old time computer paper that you used to load into those dot matrix printers, you know the kinds that had the perforated strips of holes on either side of the sheet that you tore off after the document was finished printing.  Now our home is littered with the detritus of origami and kirigami (which apparently is origami that involves cutting with scissors) projects, including these often pages-long strips of holes that end up looking like weird paper hair.

The - substantial - upside of this new obsession, though, is that Mr. Tom Angleberger has in fact written four "Origami Yoda" novels to which "Art2-D2's Guide" was just a supplemental activity book.  Jack loves these books, and they have motivated him to read like nothing else I have yet to find.

I once had fantasies of all the books that Jack and I would read together.  I imagined discovering new books with him and discussing our favorite characters and plot developments.  The reality is that I haven't been motivated to read many of the chapter books that he has started.  He had a brief period of time when he was reading the Magic Treehouse books.  I skimmed through a couple, but I found them kind of boring, as did he.  We'd been floundering around looking for something else that would engage him, and nothing did until these Origami Yoda books.  I think I probably will eventually read them, but they haven't quite grabbed me yet.  They are targeted to 4-6th grade boys, a demographic with which I don't readily identify.  He is about 2/3 finished with the third of four books in the series.  I'm sure I could probably catch up to him before he finishes the fourth one.

It's always an education when Jack becomes interested in something new.  His are never passing fancies.  When he gets interested in something, he really becomes interested in it, almost to the point of obsessive.  By default, the rest of the family gets caught up in it too, to varying degrees.  It's funny to see how desperately Violet wants to keep up with her big brother.  She knows way more about Legos, Star Wars, and now origami at three than I ever did at even 33.

I have to say, though, that of all Jack's obsessions over the years - Winnie the Pooh, Cars, Thomas the Tank Engine, Angry Birds, lions, kings, Legos, and Star Wars - the Star Wars one has been the launching point for such a variety of interests.  I was really leery when it first entered our lives, but now I've come to embrace it.

If only I could use the Force to vacuum my carpet.