Maths is Fun

Playing With Tanagrams

You can cut out the shapes from this Tanagram and muddle them up. Ask the children to rearrange them and construct the figure again. Tanagrams are actually old Chinese puzzles made by arranging shapes to form pictures. You can experiment with various shapes to form a variety of pictures.   

Play With Shapes

• Take an empty match-box and dip it into some water colour. Use it to print shapes on to paper. Try using the top, the side and the end. Use the tray from the box to get different effects. You can also make repeating patterns.
  
  
• Cut down the corner edge of an empty cereal box Unfold it to make it completely flat. Bend the sides outwards to turn it inside out. Tape up the sides. Cut out small shapes from coloured paper to make doors and windows. Stick these onto the house.

•  Make a Math’s Trail in the garden. Cut out assorted shapes and strew them around in the garden. See how many of the shapes the children can find. You can draw two-dimensional as well as three-dimensional shapes.

More or Less?

This is a puzzle you can give the children to solve in 30 seconds. It will improve their powers of addition.



There are 11 spots that you can see on the face of this dice. Do these spots add up to more or less than the spots that you cannot see ?

Tricky  Tricks

Place four rectangular cards of the same size in the positions as shown here. Ask the children to form a square by moving only one card.








In the following figure, if the centres of all the circles are joined by horizontal and vertical lines, how many squares can be formed ?

Answer :  8 squares