Scale Confusion

Ok... so im a little confused about scales. I read about the pentatonic scale having 8 notes... well from my observations it seems to have 12 notes. Can somebody help me out???

The Pentatonic scale has five notes. ('Penta' means 5) Take C Major Pentatonic scale as an example. The notes of that scale are (C, D, E, G, A). Staying with C Major as my example, the C Major scale has 7 notes. (C, D, E, F, G, A, B). As for 12 note scales, the chromatic scale has 12 notes in it. Starting on C: (C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, A#/Bb, B).

The 12 notes you say are the twelve TONES of the scale you can play:
-5--8-----
-5--8-----
-5--7-----
-5--7------
-5--7-------
-5--8-------
But there are only 5 notes, but many more tones!!

In other words, the same five tones repeat themselves over and over as you move up the scale pattern up and down the fret board

Ok thanks. So that helps clear up some of the confusion. Going through the A min pentatonic, there are 12 tones, not notes... only 5 of those tones are notes. Thanks for the help.