Students enjoy playing with shapes and creating pictures using tangrams. This unit explores the properties of 2d shapes by allowing the students to explore the 7 shapes of a tangram puzzle. There are two large triangles, two small triangles, one square, one trapezoid and one parallelogram in a tangram puzzle. Students can sort the shapes according to their properties (sides, angles, vertices, regular or irregular shapes). They can manipulate and create polygons using the tangram shapes and create pictures by turning and manipulating the shapes to fit a picture or create one of their own.
It is best to use different coloured card stock when duplicating the tangram puzzle and laminate them for student use or purchase the plastic tangrams at a teacher store.