Games with tanks and mirror books

Translated from this post by Jane Kats.

In our childhood, there was a popular simple game: take a piece of paper, fold it in half and on one half of it draw a dozen small tanks (*translator’s note: drawing balloons instead of tanks works just as well).

On the second half of the page draw your shots with a soft pencil.

Then fold the paper again so that the tanks (or balloons) and shots are on the inside and flip it to the “shot” side.  The shots are visible through the paper and you can trace them again so that the shot imprints on the side of the tanks. Then you can open the paper and see whether you hit the tank or not.

We taught the kids to play this game in class – and they couldn’t stop playing!

Interestingly, not all the kids get the idea immediately and can’t always adjust their shots. Sometime a kid sees that he’s a little short, but draws the next shot even closer to the folding line.  (*translator’s note: graph paper works well for this game)

Tanks

Folding the sheet of paper

We also brought mirror books and studied angles.
A right angle gives you 4 images.

And this way, you get 6 images.

Also 4 images, but a different way.

The mirrors are plastic mirrors from IKEA
(*translator’s note: paper mirror boards also work well and they are available on amazon – here’s an example).

It’s impossible to stop playing with these!

Everyone’s images are so beautiful!

What were your favorite games on a piece of paper?