How to Make an Origami Windmill

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Michael Webb on behalf of expertvillage.com and right now we’re going to make a windmill. To do this the first thing that you want to do is just separate your paper into fourths from edge to edge, using some simple valley folds. You want to make sure to get it as pretty precise as you can because it’s going to get a little bit more complex later and you want to do the same diagonally as well until you get a nice range of folds all throughout the piece of paper. Now that you’ve got some of those basic creases, what you’re going to do is take the two vertical edges and fold them in towards the center until they line up right on that middle crease. Get that down and do the same with the other side. Now on each half you want to take your corners and fold them up to the mid point until the end sorts of makes a triangle and open that crease back up and do it the same from the other direction so that your creases sort of form an X right in the middle of each half. You want to make sure to do that with both halves. Now this part can be pretty tricky so it might take some practice. You have these little flaps here on the end which you want to open up with your thumbs. What you’re going to do is basically open both of these edges so that they form somewhat of a canoe type shape down on the bottom of your paper. Now you can watch that again cause you’re going to do it on both sides, just open it up with your thumbs and using your index fingers, just open them up. Now all you have to do is take the top left and the bottom right corners and fold them up and down and you can kind of open up each of these little wings here with your finger so that they’ll catch a little more wind. You want to make sure to crease these pretty well cause they’re going to need to stay down somewhat. There you have your windmill and if you take something like a pencil with a paper clip on the end and you can take that and just poke it right through the middle until you got a pretty good windmill. "