Yesterday I saw this tweet Annie Perkins tweet and immediately loved the idea of this puzzle. The idea is to use the pieces to cover up everything except for today's month and date. I love puzzles, but this one is a special puzzle that changes every day! Annie shared this link so that admirers could buy one. I did and I hope people will buy one because, in addition to being fun, it looks beautiful. But, if I want to use this puzzle in my classroom, especially in my socially-distanced-pandemic classroom, with all my students, a digital copy makes a little more sense.
As a result, I set out to make a digital version of the puzzle. At the risk of venturing into long-winded-descriptive-recipe-blogger territory, I'll briefly describe my process. Lots of Google re-creations for me are Google Drawings, so I started there by inserting a Table. Then I used the shape tool to make a square that I used as a template to adjust the width and height of the table's cells until they were squares. I shaded in the cells of the table that I didn't need and added text and numbers to complete the puzzle frame. Then I copied and pasted my square template to build all the pieces out of identical squares. Then used "Group" to lock the squares together into the pieces. Voila! Digital puzzle.
You can click here to get your own view-only version. It doesn't look nearly as lovely as the original physical version, but it will do the job. Make a copy (File menu > Make a copy) for one you can edit or share with your own students. When you click on a piece, you will get blue handles. Hover on the circular one to click and turn it. You can use the Rotate function (Arrange menu > Rotate) to rotate the pieces over if you need to flip them. I like the idea of giving each student a copy to solve daily, like a personal puzzle table.
Final thought: It was easier for me to make the puzzle than to solve the puzzle!
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