Follow the ancient Chinese art
of story-telling using tangrams in this delightful book, Grandfather
Tang's Story. Before reading this to your children, ask
about their grandfathers. Where do they live? Do you see them
often? What do you enjoy doing with them? Do they ever tell
you stories, like about when they were young? Tell them, "Today
we are going to read a book about a grandfather and a little
girl." As you read the story out loud, show the pictures
to the children. As the fox-fairies change into different animals,
you may need to point out the heads, bodies, tails, and wings
to help some children visualize the animals portrayed by the
various tangrams. Emphasize the hints given about each animal
and encourage the children to try to guess what animal will
be next.
Mathematics Activities
After reading the book together,
try this activity with 1st and 2nd graders or very visual kindies
and preschoolers.
Enlarge
the various tangrams to fill an 8 1/2" x 11" piece
of copy paper or card stock. Enlarge the 7 tans shown in the
back of the book and cut them out (or have the children do this).
Let them arrange their own tangram pieces into the puzzles in
the book. You will be able to quickly spot those children who
are visual learners as they will accomplish this quickly. Point
out that there are three sizes of triangles—two large,
two medium, and one small. Point out the orientation of the
various pieces and help them to further develop their sense
of spatiality. Point out that it will take two tangrams to make
the picture of both the foxes, and three to make the puzzle
of the little girl, the grandfather and the tree. Have them
decide which was easiest to construct, which was hardest, and
which they liked the best. For a class, you might extend this
into a graphing exercise by recording tallies for each vote
and constructing a pictograph to display the results.
Extend
the study of graphs by making a pictograph of the shape of each
tan. You could classify by number of sides, names of shapes,
or relative size to each other. After constructing your graph
together, ask them questions such as: Which has more? Which
has less? How many more three-sided shapes are there than four-sided
shapes? This last question is particularly difficult to grasp.
Most second-graders want to say, "5 more," when there
are five total. Say, "Then I should be able to add five
more icons (pictures) to the graph by the 4-sided figures and
they would be equal." Do so and say, "Are they?"
(No) Erase them and ask again, "How many more 3-sided shapes
are there than 4-sided shapes?" Continue until they discover
that they will need to "count up" or subtract to find
the answer. Ask, "How many fewer (or less) 4-sided shapes
are there than 3-sided shapes?" 
You
will probably have to go through the entire process again, and
they will again discover that they need to "count up"
or subtract to answer the question. Point out that the two questions
were solved in the same way, and ask which word or words might
be clues to tell them how to find the answer. "More"
and "fewer" or "less" might be part of it,
but continue until they grasp that the phrases "how many
more" and "how many fewer" are the key words
to look for this exercise will help them to understand the language
of math that is intrinsic to their ability to be successful
on state exams.
Let
your child explore tangrams on his own. Encourage him to make
his own puzzle, reminding him to follow the few rules mentioned
at the end of the book. Some will find this activity so enthralling
it will occupy them for amazingly long period of time.
