Polyominoes are made with squares. If you use 2 squares you make a domino. There is only one type of domino. Most of us will be familiar with it.
If you use 3 squares, you get a triomino. There are 2 ways to arrange 3 squares that get you the 2 triominoes shown in this activity.
When you use more squares, you get more ways to make polyominoes. You might want to experiment with 4 squares to see how many tetrominoes you can make (easy if you’ve played tetris for any length of time).
We’re creating pentominoes in this activity and using a domino and a triomino to do this.
First you could guess how many different ways you think you could do this puzzle. If you found out how many tetrominoes are possible, it might help.
To do this activity, download the activity sheet – Making Pentominoes.
Cut out the domino and triominoes. Try placing them together and if you get a shape you haven’t found before, colour it in on the grid.
Try out this activity and let us know how you got on. You can do this in one of 2 ways:
- Add a comment to this post
- Tweet using #momentofmaths
