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.

 

 

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Be sure to visit the following related focus sections in PreKorner™: Early Childhood Numeracy Early Childhood Literacy Check out the following series of related Research Précis Edition 01 Early Literacy and Edition 04 Early Numeracy. Looking ahead toward the math tests that start at grade 3? Reading is important. See the article special "It's Math! It's Reading! No, It's Supertest!"

Get the three-part series in print-optimized PDF format! PreKorner™ Early Childhood Activity Series - Integrating Mathematics and Literacy Get more information.

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