| Explore the
magic of Tangrams |
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The
Tangram is an ancient puzzle, dating back hundreds and perhaps
even thousands of years. Its origin is obscure, but there are
a number of entertaining stories that speculate on how the first
Tangram came to be.
One tradition holds that the Tangram
was created when a clumsy tilemaker dropped a square tile, which
broke into seven pieces. In attempting to fit the pieces back
into a square, the tilemaker discovered some of the many hundreds
of shapes that can be formed from the Tangram.
The Tangram is made up of seven pieces:
five triangles, a square and a parallelagram. The pieces can
be rotated to any angle and the parallelagram can be flipped
over (it's the only piece where the back is not identical to
the front.) All of the figures shown at the left were assembled
out of these pieces. To make Tangram patterns, all seven pieces
must be used and they may not overlap one another.
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| Make
your own Tangram puzzle |
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It's easy to make
your own Tangram! Just select and print out the pattern below
or print out this whole screen. Color the Tangram any way you
like, glue it to a piece of cardboard or heavy pasteboard and
cut along the lines. You could use a photocopy machine to enlarge
the pattern if you'd like to have larger pieces.
How many patterns can you make? |
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| Storytelling
with tangrams |
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It
can be fun to illustrate a story with tangram figures or even
to make up your own story to go with a series of figures. Memorize
how you put the figures together, so that you can smoothly change
from one tangram to the next as you tell the story.
We include tangram stories in many of
our Kaleidoscope performances.
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| Take our tangram puzzle challenge |
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Come here each time you visit
our site to try to solve our newest tangram puzzle. The solution
is on a different page (no cheating, now!). Remember: all seven
pieces must be used and the pieces can't overlap.
Valentine Tangram Puzzle:
The Broken Vase
Someone gave us roses for St. Valentine’s
Day, but there’s a chip missing from our vase (the figure
on the left). Whoops! We fixed the vase (now it looks like the
figure on the right), but where did the missing chip come from?
Something strange is going on here . . . . Can you use your seven
tangram puzzle pieces to make both
the broken and the repaired vase? And can you figure out where
we found that missing piece?
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Once you've repaired your broken
vase, make up a story about a vase with a piece missing —
perhaps a detective story?
(Click here for one solution
to the Broken Vase puzzle.)
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| Tangram puzzle
archives |
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Each time we add
a new tangram puzzle challenge, the previous challenge will be
moved to our tangram archives, just
in case you missed it earlier or want to try it again |
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| Tangram resources |
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The Kaleidoscope
Storytellers are not the only ones interested in the possiblities
of Tangrams! We've found a number of resources
(on the web and elsewhere) that are worth exploring. |
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