Best suited for: Early, First & Second Level / Age 0-4, 5-7, 8-11
Maths involved: shapes, area, spatial reasoning, problem solving
Materials needed:
Tangram set (if you already own one) OR Tangram download
Christmas Tangram templates
Note: See below for downloads
Instructions
Let's have some seasonal fun with Tangram puzzles! They're great for developing spatial reasoning and encouraging problem solving.
A tangram is a puzzle consisting of seven flat polygons, which are put together to form different shapes. The seven pieces include two large right-angled triangles, one medium right-angled triangle, two small right-angled triangles, one square and one parallelogram.
The triangles and the square both have reflection (or mirror) symmetry. That means, if you drew a line down the middle of them the two halves would be mirror images of each other.
The parallelogram however does not have reflection symmetry, you can only get its mirror image by flipping it over. This means the parallelogram piece needs to be flipped to form some tangram puzzle shapes.
You can buy ready made tangram sets made of wood or plastic, so if you already own a tangram set you can just use that! For everyone else, we have prepared a tangram paper set that you can download, print off and cut out. The file 'Tangram Pieces (large)' has two sets per page.
Whether you are using your own set or our paper set, you will also need a copy of our Tangram Christmas Templates, which give inspiration for four different seasonal puzzle pictures you can create. The easy version shows you which pieces go where, so is more about having fun with shapes. The advanced version just shows you the silhouette, so learners need to use their problem solving skills to work out how the pieces fit together.
Remember what we said above, about the parallelogram sometimes needing flipped over? In our paper version, that means the yellow parallelogram needs to be flipped over to make the tree. This is indicated by the parallelogram piece being white instead of yellow in the solution for the tree puzzle. If you used these same paper pieces to make other tangram shapes, you may also need to flip it over to the non printed side.
Tangram Christmas Cards
You can also make Tangram Christmas cards. For this, we have a smaller version of the printable Tangram pieces (4 sets to a page), so that they'll fit on a folder pieces of A4 card. To make the Christmas cards, you will need:
To celebrate Book Week Scotland, we are delighted to announce the finalists and winners of our Maths Tales 2025 story-writing competition, run in partnership with Read Write Count with The First Minister.
We are delighted to also announce the winners of our Finn's Wild Maths Adventure Contest! Well done to everyone who entered, we really enjoyed going through all the different creative submissions.
