Tangram Puzzles and Solutions

We explored the story of Dr. Tan who held all of China's knowledge and power on this square piece of tile. One day, over 2000 years ago, he dropped the tile and it broke into seven geometric shapes. I challenged the children to use seven pieces to put the square back together. Legend has it that the world stopped spinning until Dr. Tan's students could put the pieces back together to make the square.

This is surprisingly difficult but all the children solved the puzzle. I then taught them how to then how to sketch a solution by drawing how each piece fits into the square. This puzzle consists of one square, one parallelogram, five isosceles right triangles (two large, one medium and two small).

I then gave them dozens of challenges (see the attachments) that only showed the blackened silhouette of a drawing. Their job was to put all seven pieces together to make the exact figure and then sketch each pieces position in the solution. I have also attached solutions.

The Tangram Solutions Sheet I attached has the template for the seven shapes the children can cut out as well as a solutions sheet where they can sketch their solutions.