Bingo

When I came to United States in early 1960s one could find Bingo played practically in every church hall on Friday night. Not being familiar with the game I attended some of these Friday night Bingos. The basic concept of the game is to match numbers pre-printed in various arrangements on a cardboard card with the numbers drawn randomly by the host. Drawn numbers appeared on a large electric board visible to everyone and were called aloud. Players covered selected numbers on their cards.  The first player matching selected numbers with those on their play card in a single row pattern called out “Bingo” to alert everyone of a winning card.  Eventually Bingo Fridays lost their popularity, but the game continued to provide lots of fun at home.  I hear from my daughter that Bingo is gaining its popularity again.

Today, however, I like to talk about a variation on the traditional bingo game – Sight WordBingo, an educational word game.  The concept of the game remains the same, but number are replaced with sight words, thus the winner needs to match randomly selected sight words with those on their play cards in a predetermined, agreed on pattern and cries out “bingo.”  The winner reads aloud sight words to practice reading and to verify that she or he won the game. This educational word game is a great way to help children build their sight word vocabulary and is both entertaining and educational.  It is adoptable to many skill levels.

Sight Word Bingo is a good resource for the classroom as several kids can play at the same time with teacher calling out the words. It also can be lots of fun on Family game nights or a rainy day. Explore our educational word games at LearningToyFun.com