Making an Education Game Using BINGO

Bingo is Fun to Play and Easy to Make into an Educational Game

The easiest way to begin making games is to use the games you already know. Bingo is a good example, since most everyone knows how to play and almost every skill can be put on a bingo game.

There are two types of cards in a bingo game. The first is the calling card. Here is the information that the caller gives the other players. It can be a math fact or review question to provide the answer to, it may be a date of a historical event, or a Roman numeral, a word written in Spanish, or a clock, or any other information the child needs drill on. The playing cards contain the matching information or answers (solutions to the math fact, answer to the review question, the historical event, the Arabic equivalent to the Roman numeral, the Spanish word's English translation, the digital time, or other.) Play is just like regular bingo. A calling card is drawn, a child needing the drill gives the answer and all players mark their cards.

Following are some ideas....the first thing listed in each set would go on the calling cards and the second would be put on the spaces of the bingo boards.

Capitals/States- on these to make it more decorative I bought some state stickers and placed a few on each bingo card to give them more color.  

Addition Facts/Sums 

Any Math Facts/Answers 

Pictures/Letters- the pictures are simple ones and the letters would be the beginning letter of the picture 

Name of Breed/Picture of Dogs- though this is not a necessary school skill, I have made lots of games that are for fun but we do learn in the process. I found some pictures in a book and xeroxed them and glued them on the bingo boards. 

Word/Its Antonym 

A Date in History/The Event 

A Biblical Woman/Her Husband's name 

Definition of a Term/The term- This is good done by units. For example, as we studied Insects we made a game with all the new terms we learned and their meanings, this was good for drill and review. 

Clocks/Digital Time- here I cut pictures of clocks out of old used math workbooks 

Coins/Amounts-for this one I used coin stamps and just stamped different combinations of
coins on each calling card.