Folding 2D Paper Shapes

Folding Paper Shapes

The following diagrams are not to scale but are intended as a rough guide.
All start with standard “A” sized paper. Red lines are fold lines. Green lines are
the result of previous folds or where an edge of original paper lies on top of
current shape.

Triangle A – Isosceles

Triangle B – Isosceles

Triangle C - Equilateral

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Folding 2D Paper Shapes

Kite A

Kite B

Parallelogram

Fold both flaps up.

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Folding 2D Paper Shapes

Trapezium A

Trapezium B – Isosceles

Rhombus
A
Fold in half to make crease. Unfold and
fold each edge in to centre crease.
Unfold. You should have 3 creases
showing and 4 equal sections.

Fold vertex A down onto crease line and repeat with vertex B, so central crease
is a line of symmetry.

B C
Fold vertex C to lie
on sloping edge (and
A repeat with vertex
D to obtain the
C D
D rhombus)

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Folding 2D Paper Shapes

Pentagon A

Pentagon B – almost regular

Top flap only

Tuck bottom flap under same
fold line.
Open out on fold line.

Hexagon

Make the rhombus as above then fold vertices at ends of longest diagonal in to
the central crease to complete your hexagon.

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Folding 2D Paper Shapes

Lesson ideas

Use the various polygons to explore lines of symmetry.

Don’t forget to include a square and rectangle to reinforce that rectangles only have two lines of
symmetry.

Use two of each polygon to explore rotational symmetry

Use several isosceles triangle A's to produce other polygons. How many different ones can you make
and name.
Create a flow diagram / decision tree to categorise each of the polygons.

Calculate the angles of each polygon.

Calculate the edge lengths of each polygon.

What dimension paper would you need to start with so that all of the polygons had the same area?

Use 3 of the rhombus shape to create a representation of a cube.

What would the volume of the cube be?

Explore various impossible geometry figures made using the rhombus

http://www.origomath.com/media/pdf/samples_books/geo/geo_paperpolygons_sample.pdf

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