Most people are familiar with the game of bingo – it’s a wonderful game that can be enjoyed by young and old, and is very popular with church and community groups. But did you know that bingo can also be important educational tool? An increasing number of teachers, have found that bingo is ideal for classroom use. This is because the game is easy to learn, highly adaptable, doesn’t require expensive materials, and most important, is a lot fun.

In the traditional game of bingo, players are of course each given a card containing a 5 by 5 grid of numbers, and check off squares on their cards when the bingo caller calls out the corresponding number. Depending on which version of the rules you prefer, the objective is for a player either to get a line of five items checked off, or to check off every item on their card. The winner of the game is the first person who checks off their items and shouts out “Bingo!”

In educational variants, the basic game is exactly the same, but there are usually some differences in detail. The first and most important modification is that instead of using bingo cards containing numbers, you use bingo cards containing whatever is the subject of the lesson. If the subject was English, you might use words from the spelling test, if the subject was geography you might use names of countries, states or cities, and in a religious or bible study class, you would use items related to theme of the class, for example, books of the Old or New Testament, names of the people in biblical stories, saints’ names, etc. And, don’t forget, you can also play themed versions of bingo to celebrate particular times of year like Christmas or Easter too!

As well as changing the bingo cards, some teachers also like to vary the game play. If you want to make the game into a kind of test, you can require the person claiming “Bingo!” to describe each of the items that they have marked off on their bingo cards – in other words, they can’t claim (for example) “Noah” as part of their winning line, unless they know a little bit of Noah’s story (including of course his building of the ark). Alternatively, if you prefer not to make the game into a test, you could for example have a class discussion after item is called out, or ask for a volunteer to explain the particular bible story or character, etc. Really, your imagination is the limit.

Of course, in order to play these variants of bingo, you will need specially themed bingo cards. In the bad old days, you would have to had to send off for them to a specialist publisher – which could be kind of expensive, even for just one set of bingo cards. Modern technology has however made this part much easier – you can simply print the bingo cards from your computer: Easy-to-use and affordable bingo card maker software makes it straightforward to print bingo cards on any theme that you like, in unlimited quantities.By: Sunil Tanna

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