Pentominoes Christmas Tree Puzzle

Help bring some festive puzzling spirit to your classroom with this pentominoes Christmas tree puzzle. My students love pentominoes puzzles, and I think your students will love these puzzles as well!

Last Christmas, I made a note to myself to look for some Christmas-themed pentominoes puzzles for the next school year. I ended up lucking out and finding two different versions of Christmas trees that can be made using a standard set of 12 pentominoes.

Pentominoes Christmas Tree Version 1

The first pentominoes Christmas tree I found was from Alex Ravsky. It was shared on a Belgian site dedicated to hundreds (or more likely thousands!) of different pentominoes puzzles and challenges.

Can you arrange a standard set of twelve pentominoes to form the Christmas tree shape?

Pentominoes Christmas Tree Version 2

I discovered an alternate version of a Christmas tree made from a set of pentominoes on Instagram. If you like pentominoes puzzles, you must check out @_pp_plyf’s Instagram account.

This puzzle is going to be slightly easier for students to solve because there are various places in the puzzle that only have a single pentomino piece that can be placed there.

If you are working with younger students, I would definitely recommend starting with this second version.

Printing and Prepping the Pentominoes Puzzles

These Christmas Tree pentominoes puzzles are designed to print on 11 x 17 inch paper. I print all of my pentominoes puzzles on 11 x 17 cardstock for extra durability, but regular 11 x 17 copy paper will work just fine as well. (If you don’t have the ability to print on 11 x 17 paper, keep reading for an alternative printing option!)

These puzzles are sized for plastic pentominoes made up of 1-inch squares.

If you don’t have a class set of plastic pentominoes, I do have a printable version of 1-inch pentominoes available to download and print. Please be aware that you MUST allow students to turn over the printed pentominoes pieces in order to solve the puzzle! This is less obvious than with the plastic pentominoes pieces.

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.

Letter Sized Version

Since many teachers have told me that they do not have access to a copy machine or printer which prints on 11 x 17 paper, I have also uploaded a letter-sized version below which prints on 8.5 x 11 inch paper. You will have to trim and tape or glue the two letter-sized pages together to form the pentominoes puzzle board.

Hint Cards

Hint cards are available to download to provide to students who are having trouble solving the pentominoes puzzle.

You can put these out for students to use as many or as few as they want. Or you can give one hint card each day. I find that almost all of my students can be successful with these puzzles with all four hint cards.