Molding a shape from soft, malleable material (clay or plaster) or constructing a shape from harder material (such as metal or paper). Molding is what a child does with Play-Doh or origami.

Complete question is;

Molding a shape from soft, malleable material (clay or plaster) or constructing a shape from harder material (such as metal or paper) is called what?

Molding is what a child does with Play-Doh or origami

Modeling

Explanation:

In chemistry, we have a branch called modeling chemistry. In modeling, we organize together a series of models instead of a collection of topics. In this approach, we will begin with a phenomena that can be readily observed and are gradually develop the simplest model of matter that helps us make sense of our observations.

Now in the question, we are Molding a shape from soft, malleable materials like clay/plaster or constructing from harder materials like metal/paper. This means that we are organizing a series of models from either soft & malleable or harder materials to produce a simple model shape.

Thus, this is simply modeling.