Explore the Universe and Your Own Backyard with Canon's Creative Park

Copernican & Ptolemaic Solar Systems/Canon (Artist Keisuke Saka)

If you love paper crafts, or if you just appreciate excellent representations of things made out of paper, check out Canon’s Creative Park website. I was instantly amazed at the quality and diversity of the projects. The first one that caught my eye, and still my favorite by far, is one which compares the Copernican and Ptolemaic solar system models.

Creative Park has hundreds of projects for printing and assembly. Most of the projects are fairly complicated, but there are a few simpler ones. The projects include masks, signs, cards, games, castles, clocks, math activities, puppet theaters, mobiles, puzzles, games, cars, trucks, boats, airplanes, roads, famous buildings and structures, geology and astronomy models, animals, insects and dinosaurs.

These projects aim toward both fun and education. I will definitely be including the architecture, science and theater projects in my homeschooling endeavors from now on. If you’re doing these projects with younger kids, I probably don’t need to remind you to always supervise the use of scissors and other sharp objects.

It is recommend to print the projects on matte photo paper. This would give a nice stiffness to the project, and the colors would show most vividly. If you build any of the projects, please let us know how it goes in the comments below.

Canon’s Scope of Use policy states that “All the materials provided in Creative Park may be freely used so long as they are used by individuals for non-commercial purposes.”