They are a great way for students to practice spatial awareness skills. You can easily add extension activities for enrichment, too. For example, students can write the fractional part of each pattern block included. Also, you can create math problems (__trapezoids + ___ triangles = ____ total blocks). Another idea is to graph the pattern blocks used. You can also have students calculate the perimeter of the shape using a triangle edge as the unit. I plan to continue adding extension activities for these activity sheets behind this divider.
Currently I only have a couple of sets of tangrams and I need to track down more.
This is one of the books I have found resources in. It has puzzles of varying abilities so it is a good thing an answer key is included in the back. This book challenges the students to make letters of the alphabet, animals, and more. It is about half the size of a normal workbook so there are several small images on one page. I have make copies of some of the pages and cut them apart to make smaller playing card-type pieces (mounted on cardstock and laminated for durability, of course). I keep the masters for the copies I have made in the binder.
Whew! That’s it for posts about my math workshop binder. If you have missed my previous posts, I have included the links below. Thank you to those who have been e-mailing me or commenting with new ideas and resources you have used. School starts after Labor Day here so I am enjoying your stories about how math workshop is going.

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