YAAS: Origami Star Jar

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

This week we met in our library's makerspace to learn how to make tiny origami stars. These were the main slides of my PowerPoint...

And then we watched these two videos to learn how to make the stars:

While the videos were helpful, I found that most of my group are one-on-one learners when it comes to something this complicated. I was too bust walking around helping people to take many pictures of the youth crafting! The only picture I have from tonight is my own star jar that I made as an example. I wrote happy memories on mine, so that I can open the stars when I'm feeling overwhelmed and remember a happy time in my life.

Overall, this program was not a total bomb but also not one that I'd do again unless I had more time. After we got through introductions and explaining what we'd be doing, there wasn't much time to make the actual stars. I sent a lot of kiddos home with empty jars and multi-colored half-inch strips of paper. Some of them got frustrated with the complexity of the craft also, so this will probably be the last time we do a maker program this advanced. But, live and learn. Several of them got the hang of the stars right away, and one even had her friends write encouraging messages on hers so she can open them when she's feeling sad, which I thought was super sweet and creative.