Tangrams

Cut a square into the seven pieces shown to create pieces called "tans." There are literally thousands of puzzle shapes—usually shown in silhouette form—that you can create using these pieces. Some, like the running person above are fairly easy to reproduce, others are more challenging.

Materials

• Craft foam.
  

Steps

1. Cut out the tangram pieces from a sheet of craft foam. You can use other materials, but I found that craft foam is nicer to work with than paper because it is thick enough to work with easily and it doesn't blow around the way paper does.
   
2. Rearrange the pieces to form different shapes. The pattern has 28 shapes you can make and you can find others on the Internet or in books.
   

Notes

• There are only a couple of rules to follow when placing your tans (pieces) to make an image. 1) You must use all seven pieces for each puzzle 2) No tans may overlap other tans. You may flip the parallelogram over if you need to.
  

Links

• Here is a free program that lets you play with tangrams.