11/5 - Tangrams

We read two books about tangrams this week.  First was "Grandfather Tang's Story" by Ann Tompert.  Then we played with tangrams for a while.  Tangrams are an ancient Chinese puzzle consisting of 7 pieces: 5 triangles, 1 parallelogram, and 1 square.  The kids tried to make the animal shapes from the book as well as some shapes on worksheets I provided, then they worked on creating things from their imaginations (they did an awesome job).  At the end of class, we read "The Warlord's Puzzle" by Virginia Walton Pilegard.  One of the puzzles we had been working on was how to fit all of the tangram pieces into a square and this book gave the solution to the square puzzle.