Most people are familiar with the traditional game of bingo played using printed cards containing numbers. Pretty much all of us have at one point or another, either played the game ourselves, or at least seen others playing the game. Furthermore bingo is quite a popular leisure or social activity, not only with seniors, and church groups, but online as well.
One thing that many of us may not have considered, are adaptations of the game of bingo. These are becoming increasingly popular both as a form of recreational fun, and as an educational tool (in schools, colleges, universities and indeed corporate training environments). Adapted versions of bingo are played using bingo cards containing words or phrases (chosen to suit to the theme of game), rather than numbers. For example, a Thanksgiving bingo game would be played using words like “Pilgrim” or “Turkey”, a Christmas bingo game would be played using items like “Santa Claus” or “Bethlehem”, and an educational game, could be played using sight words (words that students must learn to recognize to gain reading frequency), multiplication sums, chemical elements of the periodic table, or whatever is being taught in this particular class.
In the past obtaining the specially themed bingo cards to play these variants was quite difficult and expensive – you had to send-off to a specialist manufacturer to get them. Today however it is easy: you can simply print bingo cards or any theme you like from your computer. Free bingo printables on many different topics are available online, and if you want to print bingo cards containing items of your own choosing, you can purchase easy-to-use but affordable bingo card generator software for doing the job.
By: Sunil Tanna
While it’s certainly true that there are some people who enjoy playing bingo much more than others, it’s probably also true that most of us have played bingo at some point in our lives. Furthermore, while there are some people who have never actually played the game, I bet if you asked them, most of them would know how to play the game.
With bingo being so universally popular, it’s not really very surprising that there many different variants of the rules, as well as adaptations of the game intended for different circumstances and playing situations. The traditional game of bingo is of course played using bingo cards containing a grid of squares, each square containing a number, and the players’ objective is to be the first person to mark off a line (horizontal, vertical or diagonal) of squares on their card.
There are many ways that game play can be modified, the simplest of which is to change the winning criterion. For example, instead of requiring a single line, players may be required to get two separate lines, a postage stamp shape, all border squares of the card, or even mark off every single square.
More sophisticated variants involve replacing the numbers with other items, such as words, phrases, dates, times, or even math problems. Bingo games using holiday-related words and phrases are popular around holidays like Christmas, Easter, Halloween or July 4th, and other themed versions are very popular in education, including ESL (English as a Second Language) and K-12. One such example of educational variant of bingo is math bingo: cards are printed with math problems, and students must write in the answers to questions (when they question is called out) rather than simply cross off squares.
In order to play themed variants of bingo, you will of course need bingo cards containing the appropriate special items. It can be difficult and expensive to purchase themed bingo cards, and it’s incredibly time consuming to create the manually. The best answer is to get your computer to do the job – with the help of bingo card maker software, it really is very simple to printed unlimited quantities of bingo cards on any topic that you might want.
By: Sunil Tanna
