Pentominoes Jack-o’-lantern Halloween Puzzle

This jack-o’-lantern made from pentominoes is the perfect halloween puzzle for math class. In this math activity, students must work to arrange a standard set of twelve pentominoes to form a jack-o’-lantern.

This pentominoes puzzle is the perfect antidote for the fact that carving pumpkins is just too messy of an activity for math class.

Printing and Prepping the Puzzle

I printed the jackolantern template on 11 x 17 cardstock so that my plastic pentominoes fit exactly over the square grid. The class set of pentominoes that I have in my classroom are made up of 1 inch squares.

If you don’t have the ability to print on 11 x 17 cardstock or paper, I have a letter-sized version of the template available to download at the bottom of this post. You will have to trim the pages and glue or tape them together to form the full-size template.

Using the Puzzle in the Classroom

I posted this halloween pentominoes puzzle on my dry erase board with an orange set of plastic pentominoes in a magnetic pocket.

I love these magnetic pockets from Charles Leonard (available from Amazon) because students can easily grab the entire pocket of pentominoes and the puzzle and take it back to their desk to solve the puzzle.

This keeps me from having to pass out pentominoes or from students dropping pieces on their way to their desks.

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.

This puzzle would pair well with the Halloween Triples Word Puzzle.

Puzzle Source

This jack-o-lantern puzzle is the creation of Eric Harshbarger. It is featured on the cover of his Pentomino Puzzles book. I look forward to adding this book to my collection of puzzle books once I am able to run across a reasonably priced copy!

Hint Cards

Pentominoes puzzles which use a full-set of twelve pentominoes can be quite tricky for students to solve without any hints. To help make these puzzles more accessible to students, I have created a set of printable hint cards that can be given to students to give them a bit of a jump-start in their puzzle solving.

These hint cards are uploaded below!

If you like this puzzle, I suggest checking out my other Halloween math activities!

More Halloween Puzzles, Games, & Activities

• 
  Ghost Game
• 
  Picking Pumpkins Game
• 
  Halloween Triples Puzzle
• 
  Pumpkin Jack-o’-lantern Sliceform
• 
  Halloween Math Activities
• 
  Halloween Symbols Puzzle
• 
  Pentominoes Jack-o’-lantern Halloween Puzzle
• 
  9 Pumpkins Puzzle
• 
  Halloween Mystery Tangram Puzzle
• 
  Bat Tangram Puzzle
• 
  Tombstone Project