Fold. . . paper cranes at the local school. Plus COMPETITION reminder!

Cranes folded by my son's class, on a table in the classroom.

Yesterday, I went to the local school and showed my son's class how to fold paper cranes. I arranged it with the teacher at the beginning of the week, and am very grateful that he was so receptive to the idea and willing to let the paper cranes project take up a whole afternoon of school. Apparently the children wrote haiku poems in the morning, so they really did have a Japanese kind of day! Before I got there at 2pm, the class teacher had explained to them about the 1000 cranes legend and my project for Christchurch and Japan, even showing my 1000 Cranes blog post on the data projector. The children were all so enthusiastic and keen to help out. Very uplifting.

Yesterday afternoon, the teacher and every child in the class made a paper crane for the "1000 cranes for Christchurch and Japan" project. That's 29 cranes for the cause, and after they had done those I showed them all how to make a "flapping bird" as well. I am so grateful to all the children involved.

When I picked up Sonny Jim today, one of the children gave me another crane she had folded. Fantastic! The class teacher reckons that several more children will probably fold more cranes towards the 1000 over the next wee while. A few of the children showed me very small cranes they had made since yesterday afternoon - lots of them were fascinated by the three tiny cranes (wingspan of 2 cm or less) that I showed them yesterday, and had obviously been practising.

When I visited the classroom yesterday for the origami session, I took all the paper cranes photographed below so the children could have their own little competition to guess how many cranes there are. Each child has recorded their answer in one of their school books, and after I have counted the cranes I will award a prize of some Japanese origami paper to the child who has the closest guess.

How many paper cranes do you think are pictured above?

Don't forget, the blog-based "Guess the crane" competition closes in just over 24 hours, at midnight on Saturday 28th May, New Zealand time. Thank you to all those who have entered. So far there aren't many entries though, so if you haven't put your guess in the comments yet, I urge you to do so. Just write your comment in response to the "How many paper cranes so far?" blog post. Or even comment here. Someone has even put their guess on the "Blogger stole my post" post! But as long as you post a comment somewhere on here I will find it and include it, never fear! There are a lot more cranes folded now, two weeks later, but for the competition I just want to know how many paper cranes you reckon are in the photo above. Those particular cranes are all in a sealed box away from the others, and I will count them once entries have closed - at the moment I have little idea of how many there are myself, so am looking forward to doing the head count!

I will announce the winner by Tuesday night, and reveal the prize too. . . But you've got to be "in it to win it" as they say, so go on, just pick a number!
(Please?!)