The game of bingo can also be used as an educational tool for children by using the concept of the game to help the children understand the various subject matters that are taught in the class. The basic procedure which you need to follow to use the game of bingo as an educational tool is given below.
Game of Bingo
The first step is to decide on which subject you would like to teach to the class with the help of the game of bingo. The easiest subject you can choose is mathematics as it deals with numbers and the game of bingo also deals with numbers. Subjects like English vocabulary, geographical locations and names, historical events and dates, scientific terms and experiments all can be taught with this game of bingo. The possibilities are almost endless and any subject can be used as the topic.
The second thing you have to decide on is the size of the square grid or matrix which you will be using in the game. The younger children can understand the 3 by 3 grid better and can draw them very easily. The older children can handle grids which are bigger like the 5 by 5 grid used in the normal game of bingo which gives more options to play with. Grids with larger number of squares may be impractical as it will take a longer time to complete a bingo though it may give the chance to have more options.
You can create a 3 by 3 or a 5 by 5 grid on the computer with the help of any word processor program and keep it for regular use. This would act like a master copy which can be used to print the bingo cards over and over again. Take as many printouts as required of this grid consisting of blank squares to form the bingo cards.
Create lists which will have the words or numbers which you will use in the bingo games. For each set of bingo cards there should be only one list of numbers or words from which the blank squares are to be filled up.
The next step is to fill up the blank squares on the bingo cards with the numbers or the words of the list you have created. You can write the numbers or words on the list by hand into the blank squares of the grid. You can take a printout of the numbers or words on the list, cut them out one by one and paste them on the blank spaces.
You can also type in the numbers or words into the blank spaces of the blank grid you have created on your computer and then take printouts of them. You should be careful about not making any duplicates to avoid getting more than one winner at the end of the game.
The bingo cards you have thus created may get defaced or destroyed when the children use them to play the game. To avoid this problem and to ensure that the bingo cards can be used over and over again, you should laminate them to make them more durable. If the paper used for printing the bingo cards is thicker than normal then the cards made in this way will last longer.
You can use buttons to mark the home made bingo cards you have created for the lesson.
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