Printable One Inch Pentominoes

Wanting to share the joy of pentominoes puzzles with your students? Download a free set of printable one-inch square pentomino pieces to use for your puzzle solving.

Overview of Pentominoes

Pentominoes is a special name given to the set of polygons formed by connecting five squares along their edges. There are twelve distinct pentominoes that can be formed in this manner.

Purchasing Plastic Pentominoes

If you plan on doing lots of activities with pentominoes, I highly suggest buying a set of plastic pentominoes for your classroom.

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.

My husband and I actually ended up splitting one of these sets. I have three sets in my high school math classroom, and he has three sets in his middle school math classroom.

Printable Pentominoes

If you are unable to purchase a class set of plastic pentominoes or if you want to make sure each child has a set of their own pentomino pieces, printing your own pentominoes and cutting them out can work, too.

I recommend printing them on cardstock or laminating them for durability.

MATH = LOVE RECOMMENDS…

A laminator is a MUST-HAVE for me as a math teacher! I spent my first six years as a teacher at a school with a broken laminator, so I had to find a way to laminate things myself.

I’ve had several laminators over the years. I currently use a Scotch laminator at home and a Swingline laminator at school.

• Scotch Laminator
• Swingline Laminator
• Nuova Laminating Pouches

I highly recommend splurging a bit on the actual laminator and buying the cheapest laminating pouches you can find!

Printing Instructions

The danger with printing your own pentominoes is that students often don’t realize that they can flip the pentomino pieces over since one side will have a printed outline and the other side will not.

I recently updated my downloadable file for the printable pentomino pieces to include both bold line (as shown above) and fine line versions.

If you think students might struggle with the fact that one side of the pentomino has an outline and the other does not, I suggest trying the fine line version. If you cut directly on the lines, students likely won’t be able to tell or notice which side is which.

This is the one advantage that plastic pentominoes have over printed paper pentominoes. With the plastic pentominoes, students do not think anything of turning over one of the pieces while solving their puzzle. It is clear that there is no one side that is “up.”

Remember – these pentominoes must be made up of squares sized at exactly one inch to perfectly fit the pentominoes puzzle templates I have shared here on my blog.

To make sure the pentominoes print at the proper size, make sure you select either “Actual Size” or “Custom Scale: 100%” when printing. If “Fit” or “Shrink oversized pages” is selected, you will end up with pentominoes which are slightly smaller than the template.

What Pentominoes Puzzles can I use these with?

• Daily Pentomino Calendar Puzzle
• Star Pentominoes Puzzle
• 13 Pentominoes Challenges
• Penguin Pentominoes Puzzle
• Terrier Pentominoes Puzzle
• Elephant Pentominoes Puzzle
• Jack-o-lantern Pentominoes Puzzle
• Pig Pentominoes Puzzle
• Christmas Tree Pentominoes Puzzle
• Reindeer Pentominoes Puzzle