The Tangram Puzzle

Wooden Tangram Set

When I saw this tangram set I fell in love with it. I had to order one. When I received it, I was pleasantly surprised how thick these wooden pieces are -they are 1/2 inch thick! They make the most pleasant clinking sound when you are playing with them. We have some plastic sets and have had fun with tangrams before, but these wooden pieces were really fun to play with. After playing with them, following the cards, for awhile, we decided to put them away. But arranging the puzzle pieces of the tangram into just a square so that it could fit back into its box proved to be a difficult task! It took three of us about an hour to figure it out, I am embarrassed to admit! The little boys at one point began to doubt that it actually was a square that fit in that space after all. I decided to make a tangram from a piece of paper to convince them that the square could be made.

A set of tangrams can be made any time you have a square of paper at hand.

First fold your square in half, like this so the fold line makes two triangles.
Now tear apart the two triangles along the fold line.
Take one of the triangles so that the torn edge is at the bottom, and one point is pointing up.
Now fold your paper so the points on either end of the torn sides are together.
You should get two new triangles when you tear them apart along the fold line. Put them aside.

Pick up the other big triangle and place it with the torn edge down and one point up, just as you did the first one, but don't fold it the same way. Take the top point and fold it down until it touches the middle of the bottom edge. It should make a little triangle on the top part of the big triangle.
Now tear along the fold line. Put the little triangle aside with the other two triangles.
Take one of the two bottom pieces, keeping the longest side on the bottom...
Fold the longest side so that you get a square on one side and a triangle on the other.
Now tear the square and the triangle apart and put them aside with the triangles.
Now take the other odd shape and place it so that the pointed edge is on the left and the flat edge is on the right. Now fold the bottom right hand corner up until it comes to the top left corner. If you do it correctly, you will get a parallelogram piece and a small triangle.
You now should have seven pieces.
Can you put them back together into a square?
After we did that we played with the wooden set again, first with the blue side of the cards, which shows how the tangrams fit together to make the different shapes, and then with the brown side which just has the outline. You have to figure out how the tangrams come together to form the shapes.


source: 
GEMS: Build It! Festival
Kindergarten-6
9 Activities
224 pages
A wide assortment of classroom learning station activities focus on mathematics relating to construction, geometric challenges, and spatial visualization. Activities connect to the real world and potential careers. Free exploration sets the stage for such mathematical challenges as Create-A-Shape, Dowel Designs, Polyhedra, Symmetry, Tangrams, and What Comes Next? Background on geometry is provided. Special materials required include pattern blocks and polyhedra. Template patterns for folding and constructing shapes and creating tangrams are provided.

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