Tangram

Do you know the Tangram game? You have probably heard of it or even played with it. This is a very old puzzle of Chinese origin. It is said to be more than two thousand years old and it is still being played with. There are several types of Tangram, the best known is the classic Tangram in the attached image.

Consisting of seven polygonal pieces: a parallelogram or rhomboid, a square and five different triangles, the original aim of the game was to create seven different figures in which the blocks touch but never overlap. Today, however, there are more than 10,000 designs. It sounds like a simple task, but the truth is that this pastime requires ingenuity, imagination and a lot of patience.

It may seem simple, but the truth is that playing tangram is an enormous stimulus for the creativity of young people and adults, making it easier for teachers to explain plane geometry and boosting skills acquired at an early age, such as psychomotor skills, visual-motor coordination, attention, perception and visual memory, abstract thinking, imagination, spatial relations, orientation, structuring space into figures and backgrounds, logic, mathematics, problem solving and intellect.

And it goes beyond that, because this is not just a puzzle for children. The tangram can also help to improve the mental abilities of adults and, in particular, of people with psychological or neurological problems, such as senility, Alzheimer's or age-related pathologies. For this reason, it is considered a very effective psychological and pedagogical leisure game and its use is being promoted in many schools, associations and psychological help centres.

Having explained all its benefits, I hope that this ancient and precise game, which provides geometric knowledge and benefits in many aspects, will attract your attention.