Fun And Quick Tangram Sandcastle Building

We just finished up a pretty great week away at the beach. My boys are huge fans of spending time by the ocean building sandcastles with my husband and my dad. Obviously, building sandcastles in the house isn’t an option for us, but I wanted to create a fun opportunity for similar play with no-mess. Inspired by #thelittleone’s newfound love for tangram-style puzzles, I came up with this cute idea. Keep reading to check out our quick tangram sandcastle building activity, and learn how to create the same for your kiddos!

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TANGRAM SANDCASTLE BUILDING IDEA

After a recent week away at the beach, my family definitely has sandcastles and other summery fun on the brain! Check out how simple this sandcastle puzzle and play idea is to put together!

Materials:

• Small felt sheets for tangram sandcastle puzzle pieces.
  • Any colors are fine, but I chose shades of brown and tan to represent sand.
  • Choose as many or as few as you would like. I chose 7 seven shades, so each tangram piece has it’s own color to make it a bit simpler for #thelittleone initially.
• Large felt sheet for play + building area.
  • Any color is fine. I chose an aqua shade to represent the ocean.
• Scissors.
  • You’ll be cutting both paper and felt, so plan accordingly if you’re protective of your fabric scissors like I am!
• Tangram sandcastle puzzle printables.
  • Scroll to the end of the post to grab these!

Directions:

1. Print out the free pages from the end of the post.
2. Assemble the other necessary materials.
3. Cut out each of the tangram puzzle pieces from your page.
   
4. Use those pieces as patterns to cut each puzzle piece from felt sheets.
   
5. Lay out the larger felt sheet for tangram sandcastle building.
   
6. Use felt shapes to assemble a tangram sandcastle on the larger sheet. There are a few ways to approach building your sandcastles- see variations below.

Variations:

• For the greatest challenge, use the ‘level 2’ puzzle page and arrange shapes to form each of the sandcastles represented. If you get stumped, check out the ‘level 1/solution’ page for hints and answers.
• Younger kids can use the ‘level 1/solution’ page for a slightly simpler challenge to assemble the tangram sandcastles in a similar way, but with more ‘hints’.
  
• Enjoy fun, free play by skipping the puzzle pages all together, and simply build sandcastles using all the geometric shapes however looks right.
  • Feel free to cut extra shapes out of remaining felt to give kids more creative freedom. In addition to being a fun artistic activity, it’s a perfect way to learn and review basic shape facts with young learners!

>>> Sandcastle Tangram Piece Printable <<<
>>> Tangram Sandcastle Puzzle Challenges  (Level 2) <<<
>>> Solutions For Sandcastle Tangram Puzzles (Level 1) <<<

What sorts of puzzles do your kids prefer most? Tangrams, jigsaws, crosswords? Fill me in Via the comments below!