Have you ever played with a tangram before? No one knows exactly when the tangram was created but its design was inspired by a table used in the Tang Dynasty in China. This customizable banquet table, called the yanqi, could be rearranged to fit the number of people sitting around it. A traditional Chinese tangram is made up of seven shapes. The seven shapes are a parallelogram, five right triangles of various sizes, and a square. When these pieces are rearranged to fit together they create a larger square. Sometime in the 19th century, seafaring tradesmen discovered tangram puzzles in China and brought them to Europe. They became very popular because endless games and designs could be made from them including human figures, animals, and flowers as well as geometric patterns. In a way, they are similar to origami but just 2-dimensional instead of 3-dimensional.
You’ll notice that the tangram for this challenging game of Tangram Chess is a more simplified tangram composed of only five shapes: a parallelogram, a square, two different right triangles, and an isosceles triangle. There are so many potential springboards for classroom exploration when you begin with this game. You can start by teaching students congruence based on the different moves on the board, such as translations (slides), rotations (turns), and reflections (flips). It’s also a great opener for discussing a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem using a tangram. In addition to the strategies students will use to move their pieces across the gameboard and reassemble their tangram on the other side, they’ll also notice relationships among the pieces as well, such as the fact that the isosceles triangle is made up of two right triangles.
Another fun idea is to make different shapes using your tangrams and create a story. Have one student put together a human or animal shape and the other assemble another character to go with the first shape. In this way, both math and storytelling are working hand in hand.
Think about creating an entire teaching module to go with this game. Begin with the history of the tangram. Then give students worksheets with different tangram silhouettes and have them figure out how the different shapes could be placed together to create the figures. The pieces must be placed with their edges together, but they must not overlap. There are some free worksheets with tangram designs online but you can also have students make their own designs. Have 1/2 of the class create the silhouettes and the other 1/2 of the class explore with the tangrams to see how the shapes were created. Then play the Tangram Chess game and talk about the different moves that could be made on the chessboard so that your tangram can be reassembled as a square on the other side of the board. Finally, for older or more advanced students, talk about proofs using tangrams to display the Pythagorean Theorem. Perhaps given the appropriate pieces they can create the visual proof themselves without a finished picture to review.
Tangram Chess: A Geometry Game of Strategy and Motion
If your students love a good challenge that mixes creativity with logic, Tangram Chess will be a classroom favorite. This game combines the visual puzzle-solving of tangrams with the strategic movement of chess—without needing to know how to play actual chess! Players slide, flip, and rotate their tangram pieces across the board, racing to be the first to reassemble their shape on the opposite side. Along the way, they develop a powerful visual understanding of transformations—translation, rotation, and reflection—in a hands-on, movement-based way that no worksheet can match.
Tangram Chess brings geometry to life. It’s perfect for math centers, early finisher work, or small-group lessons during your geometry unit. Because each move requires naming and explaining the transformation, the game naturally encourages math talk and reasoning. Students describe which line of symmetry they’re flipping over or which corner they’re rotating around—turning mathematical vocabulary into living language. Parents will love this one too; it’s a wonderful at-home activity that transforms abstract geometry into a tactile experience.
Objective
Create, analyze, and describe designs using slides (translations), flips (reflections), and turns (rotations).
Materials
- Tangram Chessboard
- Two full sets of tangrams in different colors
Players
2 players
How to Play
- Each player sets up their tangram pieces in their home square on their side of the board (as shown on the game board).
- The youngest player starts.
- On a turn, a player may:
- Slide one piece one space horizontally or vertically,
- Flip one piece over a given line of reflection, or
- Rotate one piece ¼ or ½ turn around a corner of the piece (clockwise or counterclockwise).
- Before moving, the player must identify and name the transformation—including the specific line or point used for the reflection or rotation.
- Two pieces can occupy the same square as long as they don’t overlap.
- A piece may not move over another piece or leave the board.
- The first player to reconstruct all five tangram pieces in their home square on the opposite side of the board wins!
Adaptations and Variations
- Simplify it: Let students use only the small triangles in their set to focus on mastering a single shape and fewer moves.
- Speed version: Instead of rebuilding the full square, the first player to slide, flip, or rotate all their pieces completely off the far side of the board wins.
- Team play: Pairs can play collaboratively on the same color team, explaining moves to each other before they execute them—perfect for building communication skills.
- Challenge mode: Require students to use at least one of each transformation (slide, flip, rotate) before they can win.
Teacher Discussion Questions
Encourage math talk before, during, and after the game:
- “How did you decide whether to slide, flip, or rotate that piece?”
- “Can you describe what line of reflection you used?”
- “What happens to the orientation of a shape when you rotate it a half turn?”
- “Was there a transformation that was easier or harder to visualize? Why?”
- “If you were explaining your move to someone who couldn’t see it, how would you describe it?”
👉 Listen for students using precise math vocabulary—terms like line of symmetry, center of rotation, angle of turn, and orientation.
Tangram Chess is a beautiful example of why hands-on learning matters. It bridges art, geometry, and strategy in a way that gets kids thinking deeply while they play. As you listen to your students debate whether a move is a reflection or a rotation, you’ll see real understanding forming—something that can’t happen through a screen or worksheet. So pull out those tangrams and let the geometric battles begin!
Common Core Mathematical Standards
8.G.1 Verify experimentally the properties of rotations, reflections, and translations
8.G.2 Understand that a two-dimensional figure is congruent to another if the second can be obtained from the first by a sequence of rotations, reflections, and translations; given two congruent figures, describe a sequence that exhibits the congruence between them.
8.G.3 Describe the effect of dilations, translations, rotations, and reflections on two-dimensional figures using coordinates.