Tangram Art Work in the Classroom

Encouraging Creativity and Teamwork During Art Class

Dec 16, 2008 Jennifer Wagaman

Tangram puzzles provide a great resource for a fun activity to have all elementary students work on in the classroom.

In order to complete this activity with your class, you will need to purchase or make Tangram puzzles for your class. Ideally, you should have one Tangram per student. This art activity will help to build special reasoning skills, team building skills, and reinforce the concept of how to compare and contrast. This activity can be done in art class or in the regular classroom, depending on the objective the teacher is working towards.

Build Great Pieces of Art

Divide your class in to groups with six students each, and pass out the Tangrams to each group. Explain that they will be using these Tangrams to create a work of art, and each group is to combine the Tangrams to make one piece of art. By working together, they need to place the Tangram pieces together without arguing. The pieces of the Tangrams can be placed together in any way the students’ desire.

Make Artist Cards

Then pass out index cards for the students to create an artist card. This card needs to include the names of the artists, the number of each color used, the number of each shape used, the total number of pieces used and a name for the work of art. Explain that in an art museum, the displays all have an artist card telling you about the artist and the artwork.

Tour the Art Work

Provide a specified amount of time, such as 10-15 minutes for the students to create their artwork. Once everyone is finished, hold a discussion on how people walk around an art museum. This is a way to reinforce the classroom rules and prevent student chaos as they then walk about and look at each piece of art. Allow time for each student to walk around and look at the different artwork. Provide paper for them to make notes about what is the same and what is different about each piece.

Once everyone has finished looking at each piece of art, have the students go back to their group and put the Tangram pieces back into bags of the same color. If you provide each group with only one of each color, it will make the cleanup process easier. If you have extra time, allow the students to discuss the similarities and differences between each piece of artwork, reinforcing the concept of what it means to compare and contrast different things.

Try this simple and colorful Tangram activity in your class. With just a little preparation to collect Tangram puzzles for your students, you will have an activity that is easy to pull out at a moment's notice. Students love the opportunity to get on the floor and create these fun geometric pieces of artwork.

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Geometric Artwork Students can Create