Tangram cut out

Printable Tangrams - An Easy DIY Tangram Template

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Tangrams are simple Chinese puzzles consisting of seven pieces that fit inside a larger square outline. Here you will find printable tangrams, DIY tangram instructions, and printable silhouette puzzles to solve!

What is a tangram…

Why are tangram puzzles awesome? They roll geometry, spatial awareness, problem solving and creativity all into one while seeming like plain old fun! Tangram puzzles are not new. In fact they have been around for centuries and are one of the most popular dissection puzzles in the world.

The objective is to use all seven pieces, or “tans,” of the puzzle to create new shapes, with no overlapping. While the pieces can be played with creatively, traditionally they are used as a puzzle; trying to make the shapes fit within a specific outline.

Check out the children’s book Grandfather Tang’s Story. This children’s book uses “tans” to tell the story. It shares a bit of the history of tangrams and a lot of the magic of this special family of shapes.

Wanna’ make a tangram puzzle yourself…..

Every tangram puzzle contains the following shapes; two large right triangles, one medium right triangle, two small right triangles, one square, and one parallelogram. All seven of these shapes come together to fill a larger square in its entirety.

A better mathematician than me could probably freehand these shapes to fit inside of a square, easy peasy.

I cannot. Printable tangrams it is.

An easy way to break these shapes down is to divide up a square of any size into a 4 x 4 grid. The light grey lines in the diagram above illustrate this. The black lines in the diagram are the tangram lines that would be cut to separate your shapes. (And if you’ve got kids that are super geniuses at this precise paper folding business check out these cute little origami bookmarks!)

Now that you know how the shapes break down you can translate this grid onto the material of your choosing. Think outside of the “paper’ box. Wood, plexiglass, and foam would all make excellent lasting tangram shapes!

Printable tangrams…

If you’re working with younger kids or maybe a larger group of kids graphing all of those lines can be tricky. Below I’ve given you free printable tangrams. Just print this tangram template out on 8 x 11 paper and you’re ready to go! I love the idea of teaching kids to create these shapes themselves but that’s just not always feasible.

Use these free printable tangrams to get all of the creative problem solving and a little less frustration!

How to make a tangram puzzle….

If you print on copy weight paper now is a good time to glue your tangram template to something a bit heavier. I used a cereal box. Because I’m an art teacher with supply hoarding tendencies I have an excess of empty cereal boxes. Let’s call it upcycling, shall we? Cereal boxes make for some good art. They are heavy enough to be durable and light enough that kids can cut through them without it being painful!

Glue your entire tangram template to your cardboard then cut shapes out. Trust me. Cutting the shapes first is way more work and much harder to create precise shapes.

Make your own tangram puzzle…

Just because the shapes of a tangram puzzle are super specific doesn’t mean that they can’t be decorated and made unique. We used washi tape. Not only is it pretty and sparkly but it also serves to reinforce the edges and make the pieces last longer. Double win.

Imagine tangram puzzle pieces embellished by patterned paper, paint, natural materials, decoupage. There are endless possibilities.

How to solve a tangram puzzle…

The traditional way to play with tangram puzzles is to attempt to use all seven pieces, with no overlapping, to fill a given outline. Common themes are animals, numbers, and letters.

The printable below provides four printable outlines that can be solved using the tangram template above. When you grab the printable tangrams in my Resource Library these silhouettes are part of the deal! Print them out and they are sized to work perfectly with your puzzle pieces!

Want to grab this free tangram printable puzzle pack….

Do you want a copy of this printable tangram puzzle for your students to make? This gem is totally free for Kitchen Table Classroom subscribers.

Just fill in the details in the form below to become a KTC subscriber. Check your email and confirm that you really meant to subscribe. Upon confirmation you’ll receive the PDF immediately. It’s that easy!

As a subscriber you’ll begin to receive my weekly newsletters too! that means my newest ideas and printables will get delivered to your inbox making it easy to stay connected and creative with your kids!

What if you’re already a subscriber…

If you are already a subscriber- thank you! You can still fill out the form above to get this printable tangram. It’s super simple and you won’t be sent double the emails- I promise.

After you become a Kitchen table subscriber you’ll also receive a password to my Free Resource Library. My Resource Library is one more way to access these printable tangrams and browse all the free printables KTC has to offer! (I’m talking hundreds of free pages!)

More way to explore tangram puzzles…

If your kids enjoy tangram puzzles there are lots of ways to explore them like this magnetic tangram puzzle book. This single player game by Think Fun is a modern take on old fashioned tangram puzzles. And this wooden tangram puzzle is pretty enough to leave out on your coffee table.

These little puzzles are so simple but such great fodder for creative problem solving. Leave the screens behind and play!

If you enjoyed this free printable tangrams please share on your favorite social media channel!

Every single share helps me grow the Kitchen Table Classroom a bit and bring you more fun projects and free printables like this tangram printable!

Printable Tangram Puzzles ⋆ Sugar, Spice and Glitter

Learn

A fun printable tangram activity for kids, these Tangram Puzzles encourage kids to think creatively while visual-spatial skills, math skills and math vocabulary.

Tangram Puzzles for Kids

Have you heard of tangrams?

I first learned about them a few years ago and they have been a staple in our daycare’s math corner ever since!

Tangrams are two-dimensional Chinese puzzles that rely on a seven (tan) geometric shapes that are cut out of a square. These shapes can be re-arranged to form different shapes or structures, often with a suggested shadow image as a guide.

The seven shapes of a tangram are:

2 large right-angled triangles
1 medium right-angled triangle
2 small right-angled triangles
1 small square
1 parallelogram (sometimes called a rhombus, rhomboid or rhomb)

Benefits of Tangram Puzzles

Tangram puzzles offer many of the same benefits of building blocks. They encourage kids to stretch their understandings of visual-spatial relationships to figure out how the individual shapes can work together to form a new shape. They start looking at the shapes as not fixed, but possible to be interacted with in a variety of angles and perspectives.

During this problem-solving process, kids can learn the names of the different geometric shapes and become more familiar with them.

These puzzles are also great for sharpening fine motor skills, which are essential for not only gripping a pencil (the beginning of writing readiness) but also everyday life skills.

Tangrams can be played with independently, but they are also great for cooperative learning. Kids can problem solve together to figure out the puzzles.

Today’s printable gives you four sets of tangrams as well as eight “suggestion” puzzles to get kids started: a butterfly and a fish, numbers four and one, a shoe and a plane, and a figure doing a handstand and running.

These different categories of puzzles lets kids see the variety of options available for their tangrams, which they can then build on to create their own puzzle possibilities.

Tip: I like to laminate our printables so we can use them multiple times. This is the laminator I use, and I just buy the super cheap packages of laminate sheets from Amazon. It costs about 13 cents a sheet to laminate which lets us get so much use out of any activity we print out.

While the edges of the laminate do prevent the shapes from fitting together perfectly, we are able to still build our shapes and we get so much use out of the puzzles. Alternatively, you can print on cardstock for somewhat sturdy tangrams (they may need to be re-printed after a few uses if the edges tear) or you can grab wooden tangram blocks. (We also own these magnetic ones which you can see in use in our Dinosaur Tangrams post.)

Materials Needed for Tangram Puzzles

White card stock or printer paper
Laminating paper (and laminator)
Printable Tangrams

Download and print the activity pack on white paper or card stock. Laminate, if desired.

Also, for an added challenge, print one set of the “tangram puzzles” in just black ink. I’ll describe why below.

How to Use These Tangram Puzzles

Kids can play with their tangram shapes to create their own unique shape puzzles, but I think it’s easiest to start off with using pre-designed puzzles for them to get a sense of the possibilities and how the puzzles work.

(Again, they can work independently or with a partner.)

Using the colored puzzles, kids can replicate the image that they see and watch as their individual shapes come to live as a new shape/structure.

Using blacked-out puzzles, kids have to experiment more to figure out how to build a shape using their tangram pieces. They can then use the colored puzzles to check their work – like an answer key.

(Note: my printer was not being cooperative and printed my puzzles in gray-scale – you want just black and white to achieve the black out effect. If your printer also does this, you can go over the shape with a black marker to hide the shape breakdown.)

Pin this Printable Tangram Puzzle Printable for Later:

Don’t forget to grab your FREE Printable Tangrams.

Check out some of our other …, Pancake Flipping Math Activity inspired by If You Give a Pig a Pancake or Domino Math for Kids (with free printable).

Tangram

Tangram is a puzzle that is a square cut into 7 pieces in a certain way. For preschoolers, the tangram is a great lesson to prepare for school. And at the age of 5-6 years, children love to play very much. They are interested in puzzles with pictures.

The goal of the game is to collect figures of people, animals, birds, numbers, objects from tangram parts ...

Tangram Rules:
- All seven parts must be included in the completed piece.
- Parts must not overlap.
- Parts must be adjacent to each other.
Tangram scheme

( you can print in Word, download file by clicking on the mouse)

Parts of Tangram

This is tanogram itself, from its parts they receive invented pictures. You can buy it, but it's easy to do it yourself using the construction scheme. The drawing can be printed on colored paper on a printer or drawn independently using a ruler. Cut out puzzle pieces from colored paper. Then, laying out the desired figure, glue it on a dense sheet.

An example of a dog scheme - made by 1st grade students for a lesson in mathematics and technology.

The tangram game for children can be in several levels of difficulty. It is better to start with the simplest - lay out the figure according to the model.

Scheme - rocket

This is how you can make a house out of a tangram.

At the second stage, you can invite the children to lay out the figures in a solid pattern.

And the third level, the most difficult: come up with your own figures that look like people, animals, birds. We offer pictures invented by children.

Tangram scheme - fox

Hare and camel

Scheme - person

Figures - Fish

Print the Tangram of Zhivnitny.
(fox, cat, hare, camel, horse, dog)

(Clicking on the image will download a Word document file in docx format, which can be printed using Word)

0031

(Clicking on the image will download a Word document file in docx format, which can be printed using Word)

There are various legends about the appearance of the tangram. Here is one of them…

Almost two and a half thousand years ago, a long-awaited son and heir was born to an elderly emperor of China. Years passed. The boy grew up healthy and quick-witted beyond his years. One thing bothered the old emperor: his son, the future ruler of a vast country, did not want to study. It gave the boy more pleasure to play with toys all day long.

The emperor summoned three wise men, one of whom was known as a mathematician, another became famous as an artist, and the third was a famous philosopher, and ordered them to come up with a game, while having fun, his son would comprehend the principles of mathematics, learn to look at the world around him with close eyes. through the eyes of an artist, would become patient, like a true philosopher, and would understand that often complex things are made up of simple things.

Three wise men invented "Shi-Chao-Chu" - a square cut into seven parts.

Many figures can be obtained from tangram parts. You can invite the child to make, for example, a transport - a boat, an airplane, figurines - swordsmen, a rooster, a pelican, a tree, a candle.

See also:

- tangram figures - diagrams, drawings for children

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Do-it-yourself tangram puzzle

Tangram - "seven boards of mastery" person, animal, household item, letter or number, etc. ). The figure to be obtained is usually specified in the form of a silhouette or an external contour. When solving the puzzle, two conditions must be met: first, all seven tangram figures must be used, and second, the figures must not overlap.

There are several legends of the origin of of this Chinese puzzle, this one is my favorite. It can be told to a child when getting acquainted with the tangram:

How three wise men came up with "Shi-Chao-Chu".
Almost two and a half thousand years ago, a long-awaited son and heir was born to an elderly emperor of China. Years passed. The boy grew up healthy and quick-witted beyond his years. One thing bothered the old emperor: his son, the future ruler of a vast country, did not want to study. It gave the boy more pleasure to play with toys all day long. The emperor called three wise men to himself, one of whom was known as a mathematician, the other became famous as an artist, and the third was a famous philosopher, and ordered them to come up with a game, having fun with which, his son would comprehend the beginnings of mathematics, learned to look at the world around him with the gaze of an artist , would become patient, like a true philosopher, and would understand that often complex things are made up of simple things. Three wise men came up with "Shi-Chao-Chu" - a square cut into seven parts.

Tangram is an exciting and interesting puzzle that a child can play from 2-3 years old. Playing with a tangram contributes to the development in children of the ability to play by the rules and follow instructions, visual-figurative thinking, imagination, attention, understanding of color, size and shape, perception, combinatorial abilities.

To begin with, the child should be introduced to the tangram, let him examine them. Then teach him to make the simplest figures from 2-4 parts of the tangram, for example, a house, a Christmas tree, a square.

Further development of the game tangram takes place in 4 stages:

1. Compilation of figures by superimposing on the tangram scheme.
The child is given a diagram of a tangram figure, he must put all the elements of the tangram on it.

2. Making figures according to the model.
The child is given a diagram of a tangram, but he must already put the figure from the elements next to it on the table.

3. Compilation of figures according to the contour image.
The child must fold the tangram figure along its contour.

4. Compiling figures according to one's own design.
At this stage, the child independently comes up with figures for drawing up, which develops the imagination very well.

Tangram for the game is easy to make with your own hands. You can use different materials for this: cut out from cardboard, cut out from plywood or planks, cut out from boxes for disks or folders with hard covers. Moreover, you can make parts both of the same color and different.

Here are template for cutting tangram.

Schemes for different stages of tanking training can be found on our website according to the following links:

level 1 Tangram scheme - animals

level 1 level - objects

2 level - tanrama schemes

Interesting interesting :
Writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll is considered a tangram enthusiast.
Learn more