5 Piece Pentomino Square Puzzle
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This pentomino square puzzle will test your spatial reasoning skills as you work to assemble the five pentominoes into the provided square grid.
Previously, I have shared a collection of 13 free printable pentominoes challenges. This individual puzzle is substantially easier than those challenges and the animal shaped pentomino puzzles I have shared here on the blog. This would make a great first introduction to pentominoes for students!
Instructions
Place the five provided pentomino pieces on the provided grid to form a 5×5 square. The pentomino pieces may be rotated or flipped, but the pieces may not overlap one another.
Puzzle Source
This puzzle is from a collection of 199 different mathematical puzzles offered as a free download from IREM de Lyon. This is a top-notch puzzle resource if you speak French.
I sadly do not speak French, but I was able to use the Google Translate app to translate quite a few of the puzzle instructions in order to use them in my classroom. Other puzzles I typed up from this same resource is the U Sums Puzzle, Magic H Puzzle, Lines of 3 Puzzle, 4 x 4 Checkered Square Puzzle, Equal Sums Puzzle, Square Sums Puzzle, Product Square Puzzle, and the popular Loops Puzzle.
This specific puzzle is #1 – Les cinq pièces vertes.
Printing and Prepping the Puzzle
This puzzle is designed to print on letter-sized 8.5 x 11 inch paper, but you could easily scale it to print on A4 paper as well.
When printed on letter-sized paper, you have the option of cutting out the five pentomino pieces for students to use when solving the puzzle or using pentomino pieces from a set of plastic pentominoes made up of 1 inch squares.
MATH = LOVE RECOMMENDS…
Amazon offers several brands of plastic pentominoes which I recommend. Each brand is sold in a tub containing six sets of twelve pentominoes each for a total of 72 pentomino pieces.
- Learning Resources Rainbow Pentominoes
- Learning Advantage Pentominoes
- Didax Colorful Pentominoes – CURRENTLY THE CHEAPEST!
Want each student to have their own set of pentominoes? I also offer a set of free printable one-inch pentominoes pieces which can be laminated or printed on cardstock for durability.
If you are printing the pentomino pieces, I suggest printing on a heavier weight of paper such as cardstock for durability. You can also print on a regular weight paper such as Astrobrights and laminate it before cutting out the pieces.
I used this puzzle last year in my classroom as one of my Puzzles of the Week. I prepared several copies of the puzzle and hung it on my dry erase board using a Charles Leonard magnetic pocket which I picked up from Amazon. They have been a real game-changer in my classroom organization!
Free Download of 5 Piece Pentomino Square Puzzle
The 5 Piece Pentomino Square Puzzle is available to download in both PDF format and as an editable PUB file. In order to edit the file, you will need to make sure you have Microsoft Publisher installed on your computer.
5 Piece Pentomino Square Puzzle (PDF) (206 downloads )
5 Piece Pentomino Square Puzzle (Editable Publisher File ZIP) (64 downloads )
Puzzle Solutions
I intentionally do not make answers to the printable math puzzles I share on my blog available online because I strive to provide learning experiences for my students that are non-google-able. I would like other teachers to be able to use these puzzles in their classrooms as well without the solutions being easily found on the Internet.
However, I do recognize that us teachers are busy people and sometimes need to quickly reference an answer key to see if a student has solved a puzzle correctly or to see if they have interpreted the instructions properly.
If you are a teacher who is using these puzzles in your classroom, please send me an email at sarah@mathequalslove.net with information about what you teach and where you teach. I will be happy to forward an answer key to you.
