Trying Tangrams and Chopsticks

As a result of our recent camping trip, we are having a short summer learning week.  I didn't want to skip our summer learning altogether, so I decided to pick several quick, easy activities that would get the kids brains working while still introducing some information on our country of the week, China.  So after throwing some of the projects I had originally planned out the window, I found some great ideas for quick activities on the UK's China for Kids site like the printable Tangram puzzles the kids worked with yesterday.

Dirty D was trying a rocket shape.

Tangrams are essentially seven shapes that can be assembled in many different ways to create pictures.  Sort of like a puzzle you get to design yourself. The kids had never used them before, so I printed out a couple sets and showed them the pictures you could create with them to give them an idea of what Tangrams were all about.  Princess and Dirty D were both pretty intrigued, and tried their hand at creating several of the pictures I pulled up.

Here Princess was attempting a house shape.

These actually took some real critical thinking skills!  It can all get a little confusing when you have mostly triangles and the shape is supposed to be a rectangle, but that didn't frustrate the kids enough to give up!  

Definitely get an A for effort!

Eventually, they started creating their own puzzle designs while they waited for our next activity: trying to eat some Chinese stir fry with some makeshift chopsticks.  Now we don't go out to Chinese ever, so I didn't have any chopsticks anywhere.  Instead I just cut the sharp points off some wooden skewers and the children tried using them.

Dirty D jumped right into using the chopsticks

And actually did better than the rest of us!

While Princess started with both sticks,

But eventually just used one.

This was also pretty complicated for us first-timers! But we had a good amount of fun trying.  Both the kids said they definitely want to try using chopsticks and tangrams again.  I think another delicious stir fry is in order soon!