Paper Airplane and Cocotte

Have you ever made a paper airplane? or have you ever done any origami?

I remember my dad showing me how to make the best paper airplane ever. I've shown my children, and, when I was teaching, I showed the students also.

I remember the day that he showed me. We were at one of my parents' friends house. I remember them being from Switzerland. I can almost remember their names, but it escapes me... I just remembered it was Vermeille. They had a house in the country and there was plenty of room to fly a paper airplane.

Here is a little pictorial of how to make it. It is not quite a step by step, but it is pretty close. The nosepiece steps are not very detailed.

Start with an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper. Fold as shown above to make a square piece and a small strip of paper. See below.

The square piece is the nosepiece, the small strip is the tail.

Fold the square so that it resembles the above picture... I know you actually need more details to make it work. I might post them later.

The finished nosepiece of the plane looks like this.

The finished plane with the tail looks like this.

You can adjust the tail to fly in loops, to straighten out the flight pattern, and to adjust the landing smoothness. This is a fine flying machine.

Another piece of origami that my dad showed my sister and I was a cocotte. My sister and I would spend loads of time trying to make the smallest possible one. Here is an example of what it looks like.