Pentominoes Fish Puzzle

In this fish pentominoes puzzle, you are challenged to use a standard set of twelve pentominoes to build the shape of a fish. This is part of a collection of animal-shaped pentominoes puzzles available here on my blog.

My students last year really enjoyed the different animal-shaped pentominoes puzzles that I put out.

Puzzle Instructions

The goal of this pentominoes fish puzzle is to construct the shape of a fish using a standard set of twelve pentominoes. The pentominoes may be flipped or rotated, but they are not allowed to overlap one another.

Due to symmetry, I believe this puzzle has two different solutions. But they are reflections of one another.

Printing and Prepping the Pentominoes Puzzles

11 x 17 Version

This pentominoes puzzle is 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!)

All of my pentominoes 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.

Hints for Solving

Pentominoes puzzles which use an entire set of twelve standard pentominoes can be quite tricky to solve. It’s not unusual to hear that students have worked on a puzzle for over 45 minutes without finding a solution.

While some students can handle this level of perseverance, other students might benefit from a few hints in solving the puzzle. I have created a set of 4 printable hint cards that can be used with students to give them (or yourself!) a small piece of the solution.

These fish hint cards can be downloaded at the end of this blog post.

There are several ways you can use these printable hint cards in your classroom.

If you are having students work on the puzzle as a full-class activity, you can make the pentomino puzzle hint cards available after students have worked for a certain amount of time.

If you are using the pentominoes puzzles as an early finisher activity or as a puzzle of the week for students to work on in their spare time, you could post the puzzle without any hints on day 1. On each subsequent day, you could add a different hint card.

I look forward to seeing what other ways that teachers come up with to make these hint cards work for their students.