Polyomino

Okay kiddo, have you ever played with building blocks before? Imagine if those blocks were shaped like rectangles or squares, and you could connect them together to create bigger shapes. That's kind of like what a polyomino is!

A polyomino is a shape made up of smaller squares (or rectangles) that are all connected to each other along their sides. So if you took four squares and connected them in a line, you'd have a polyomino with four pieces. If you connected five squares in a line, you'd have a polyomino with five pieces.

Now, here's where things get really interesting. There are lots and lots of different polyomino shapes that you can make, and each one has its own name. For example, a polyomino with four pieces that are attached in a square shape is called a tetromino. A polyomino with five pieces attached in a cross shape is called a pentomino.

There are even bigger polyomino shapes, like the hexomino (six pieces), heptomino (seven pieces), and so on. Scientists and mathematicians have spent a lot of time studying these shapes, trying to figure out how many different polyomino shapes there are, and how they can be tiled (arranged) in different ways.

So next time you build with blocks, see how many polyomino shapes you can make!