Most sources suggest it’s possible that it appeared in Europe as early as the 17th century. The exact lineage and timeline for the introduction of the cootie catcher around the world is somewhat murky. The points of a cootie catcher become legs and the spaces for fingers open up to hold the salt. The 1928 book Fun with Paper Folding contained the “ salt cellar,” which, when inverted from how we’re used to seeing it today, was meant to invoke a container that could hold and pour salt. The fortune teller also goes by chatterbox, whirlybird, or salt cellar, and that last name is actually reflective of how the origami figure was first introduced to the United States. If you were unlucky enough to never encounter a cootie catcher, let’s back things up to the beginning. Left on a desk, trashed, or left behind for someone else to ponder what it all means. They were pocketed by those who got what they wanted and wished to preserve it, those who didn’t and wished to conceal it. The cootie catching practice has endured through the years, though individual ones never did. It’s a playground pastime for the inactive mystics and gossips of school, or a way to pass the time in class.
Full of secrets, mysteries, and fates, all of which your friend just wrote right in front of you. Delicate in its construction, but usually (in my experience) scrawled over with crayons or colored pencils with clunky renderings. It’s centuries-old origami performed by kids (usually), many of whom live far away from the device’s country of origin. You can also add jokes, riddles, trivia, or even activities from your bucket list.A cootie catcher is full of carefully-folded dichotomies. There are infinite ways to fill in your cootie catcher. You will be hungry again in another hour.Don’t kiss an elephant on the lips today.Next time you yawn, a bug will fly into your mouth.You will break a pencil while doing your homework.You will find money under your couch cushions.Keep your head down if you want to find money on the sidewalk.Be ready to open the door when opportunity knocks.Or, you can make a fortune teller with fun fortunes from this list:
You can write 8 answers from the following list we used the bold ones. You can make a cootie catcher that can “predict the future.” This way, kids can ask a different question every time and find out the answer once they open the flap. I also included ideas of what you can put inside your cootie catchers to have hours of fun.
If you forgot how to make this origami craft, don’t worry! Below, I explain exactly how we made ours and show you how to make a fortune teller from scratch.Īnd if you don’t remember how to play with it, you can find it right after the instructions. It is a great way to keep them happy and away from technology for a while. Today, I’m sharing with you that very same template for free, so you can teach your kids how to make a cootie catcher too! It is super cute, so they used it even after mastering the folding to make more cootie catchers with different themes. Of course, I couldn’t resist teaching them and even made a printable template that they could use if they had a hard time understanding the folds. That’s why, when the kids told me they were bored, I told them to make one but to my surprise, they had no idea how. I remember that when I was a child, we used to have fun making papercrafts, and our absolute favorite were Cootie Catchers.