How to Make a Cootie Catcher!

Materials Required:

• A Sheet of Paper (Any paper works! Ex. A Blank Sheet, Lined Paper, or Construction Paper)
• Scissors
• Any Writing Utensil (Ex. A Pencil, Pen, Marker, Crayon)

Instructions:

*For Easy Viewing and Understanding, I’ll Use A Lined Sheet of Paper As An Example*

1. Take a sheet of paper and, from the corner, bring it to the opposite side of the paper forming a triangle, make sure to make a crease in the paper.

2. Using scissors, cut off the excess rectangle of paper. If you used a square piece of paper, this is not necessary!

3. Take the opposite corner of the paper which was not previously folded and create another triangle with the paper. After creasing the paper, there should be an X of creases.

4. On all four corners, fold them into the centre of the paper. The centre should be where the two creases meet.

5. Fold the paper over and, once again, fold each corner into the center of the paper. This should create another smaller square.

6. Fold the paper in half in both directions, bottom to top and left to right.

7. On both sides of the paper, write down four different words on the squares. The words can be colours, animals, seasons, names; Be Creative! (For my example, I wrote colours)

8. Flip the paper over and on each of the 8 triangles, write down either a word or a number. If you choose to number the triangles, the numbers should be 1-8, but should be a reasonably easy number to count to. If you choose to write a word, try to stick to a theme! In my example, I chose to write down different animals.

9. Flip up each of the four tabs you just wrote on the underside of each triangle, write a message. The message can be anything from a fun prediction or a dare! Some examples are: “You will have good luck tomorrow” or “I dare you to say the alphabet backwards”

10. Refold the cootie catcher and place your thumb and index finger in the flaps under the four squares. Once completed, bring all corners of the paper to the centre. After it has popped out, you’ve completed the cootie catcher! The photo above shows the completed product.

 11. Have fun and enjoy playing with the cootie catcher!

How To Play:

By grabbing the cootie catcher from the bottom, you can use the cootie catcher to play a fun little game. With another person, ask them how to choose each new option presented to them.

When they choose their first option, in my example it would be a colour, you open the cootie catcher and switch which section is opened depending on the number of letters there are in the word. Ex. Blue would mean 4.

Repeat this process with the 8 options on the inside of the cootie catcher. After repeating this process for the inside of the cootie catcher a few times, finally open and read the message of the final section they chose.

Submitted by: Shoshana Cutler, WLU Student Blogger