How To Play Bingo

While many of our customers may be familiar with how to play educational bingo from using it in their teaching careers, it is a new activity for some of them.  Here is how to play:

What You Need

• One unique bingo card for each player (no photocopying!)  All cards printed by Bingo Card Creator are unique.
• Each player needs to have some method of marking the cards.  A writing utensil works fine if you only want to use the cards once.  If you would prefer not to write on the cards, marking them with coins, candy, or some other sort of chip also works.
• Generally, one gives a small prize to the winner.  For Halloween bingo this might be candy, but for, say, spelling review bingo it might be as simple as a Good Job sticker!  Note that bingo can generate multiple winners, so it is a good idea to prepare a few prizes just in case.
• Some method of calling the cards.  Calling just means telling players what space to mark.  The simplest way to call is with a call list, where you just read words from the top of the list to the bottom.  You can also cut up the words from a bingo card and mix them in a hat, then draw them at random.

(Note that if you’re familiar with traditional numerical bingo you might be expecting to call a letter with every word.  Bingo Card Creator defaults to having the words appear under any letter, so you probably do not want to do that.  If you would rather do this, select Options -> Consistent Column Headers, and make sure to print your call list from File -> Print Call List.  The online version of the software doesn’t support this yet.)

Instructions

1. Tell everyone the rules.
2. Tell everyone to mark off the free space.
3. From your call list or hat, pick one word and announce it to the players.  You can either just read the word or, if you’re feeling creative, you can ask a question to which it is the answer.  For example, if you were playing US Presidents Bingo, you might ask “Which President signed the Emancipation Proclamation?”  Make sure to keep a note of all the words you have called by, for example, ticking them off with a pencil or leaving them in a pile.
4. Continue playing until someone scores all the words across a row of their card, down a column of their card, or across a diagonal (top left through bottom right passing through the free space, or top right through bottom left passing through the free space).  That player should stand up and say “BINGO!”
5. Check the BINGO to make sure you actually called the 5 words they BINGOed with, and if they did, congratulate them and award them a prize.
6. You can continue playing bingo so that multiple players can win!

This is the basic game of bingo, but there are many variations.  If you have one you particularly like, please feel free to share it with us in the comments!