Objective: Students will learn to move a tangram using flips.
Manipulative Activity: Introduce the concept of flips. Demonstrate horizontal and vertical flips on the overhead. Students practice flipping their tangrams at their tables. Encourage students to talk about what happens when the tangrams are flipped. Students may notice that when a tangram is flipped it becomes a mirror-image.
Technology Activity: Students will use the Tangrams applet from the National Library of Virtual Mathematics Manipulatives. Depending on the availability of computers for your students, this activity could be done individually, with partners, in groups, or as a class.
Have students go to Flipping My Tangrams.
Paper/Pencil Activity: Students draw how each tangram looks flipped horizontally and vertically.
Note: There are many books that have a "mirror" feature. As you read the story to the children, bring the "mirror" or "reflection" highlighted in the story to their attention.
Mirror Me : A Mirror Book (Baby Einstein)
by Julie Aigner Clark, Nadeem Zaidi (Illustrator)