We recently took this book ‘Grandfather Tang’s Story’ by Ann Tompert out of the library and started to explore using tangrams to make pictures.
The tanagram is an ancient Chinese puzzle. A square is cut up into seven pieces and then used to create silhouettes of a shape, that could be a person, a animal, an object. All seven pieces should be used, they should be touching each other, though not overlapping.
Our little munchkins made all the tanagram pictures in the book. Here you can see a fox, a fish, a rabbit and a swan. Some of the silhouettes really do require a lot of imagination to see what the picture is meant to be. We created a rather dodgy looking lion and the fish was a little bizarre.
In the world of imagination anything can be anything so I think we will be okay!
Our little munchkins started to create some pictures of their own. We did cheat on some occasions by not using all seven pieces.
Tanagrams can be a great educational tool. Have a look at this article from Parenting Science for more information and ideas.
Do you know of any ancient games or puzzels that are fun for children? Please comment below
Thanks for reading
Sarah 🙂
The Real Lara Shoe 
What a great way to read a book and then be able to have a project about it!!
That’s so great for imaginations! And I love the bunny!!
Jodie
http://www.jtouchofstyle.com
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And mine love to imagine!
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Great post from an old book! #FabFridayPost
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There’s some fabulous old books out there 😀
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Tangrams are so fun! We found a magnetic set of them with some picture suggestions and put them in some busy bags for the boys to use in the car.
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A magnetic set is a brilliant idea 💡 I’ll have to see if I can find some!
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What a great way to involve the kids in putting to practice what they are learning.
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I love tangrams and that book sounds great, may have to do this with my two x
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I love that they can just try different shapes and there’s really no wrong answer
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We used to have tangrams when I was a kid. You’re right that sometimes they don’t quite look like what they’re supposed to! One of my girls loves puzzles of any kind, but the older one is less enthusiastic about them. They both love magnetic letters, and now that they’re older they are actually creating words!
~Jess
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Children are all so different, what works for one…. keeps us on our toes!
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I remember doing tangrams too – love books that have extra things for children to do as well as a story #fabfridaypost
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Very engaging 😀
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I love this! I am definitely off to google more of these now 🙂 #fabfridaypost
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Wow! This is so creative! I will have a go with the kids. By the way, we also had a go with the crystal salt thingy – but our crystal wasn’t as big as yours. I think we need to do that again. lol! #FabFridayPost xx
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We need to go it again too! You can do sugar crystals by hanging string in a jar!
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Ooo! That sound like fun! I will give it a try. Thank you. xx
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