As you probably know, Saint Valentine’s Day (often known as simply as “Valentine’s Day”) is a holiday celebrated on February 14th. On this day, it is common for lovers to exchange cards, gifts or flowers, for proposals of marriage to be made, and people to give to charity, or give each other candy.
These days of course, children also want to get into the spirit of Saint Valentine’s Day. Kids love to create Valentine’s crafts, send each other Valentine’s Day greeting cards, and play Valentine’s games. Parents and teachers will therefore want to be on the lookout for activities and games that are suitable for February 14th.
One idea for a suitable activity is to play bingo. However, instead of using bingo cards containing numbers, cards containing words chosen specially for the occasion (such as “Admirer”, “Chocolates”, “Cupid”, “Kiss”, “Perfume” or “Sweet Heart”) are used instead. The kids are each given their own bingo card, the teacher or parent acts as caller, and you’re ready to play! The beauty of bingo, is that it’s easy to learn and play, can be tied in with the theme of the day, and, most importantly, is a lot of fun!
Of course in order to play the game, the main obstacle that needs to be overcome is getting suitable bingo cards. In the past, this was often a problem as you had to send off for preprinted cards, and these weren’t always cheap or easy to obtain. Today, however things are much easier – parents and teachers can simply print bingo cards from their computer: free Valentine’s bingo printables are available on the Internet, or you can download affordable and easy-to-use software which makes it incredibly easy to print custom bingo cards.
By: Sunil Tanna
Pretty much everybody knows how to play bingo right? Each player gets a card containing a grid of numbers (usually a 5 by 5 grid with a special “free space” square in the middle), the bingo announcer calls out numbers in random order, plays check off the corresponding numbers from their bingo cards, and the first player to get an agreed upon pattern (usually a line of five in any direction regardless of whether it’s horizontal, vertical or diagonal), is a the winner. You can buy ready-made bingo cards, so why would anybody make to make their own bingo cards?
The answer lies in the fact that themed variants of the standard game have become massively more popular in the bingo cards. In themed versions of bingo, the bingo cards are not printed with numbers, but instead are printed with words, phrases, or even math problems.
Probably the most popular themed versions of the game are those based around particular holidays such as Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween or July 4th (US Independence Day). In these variants, they are printed with words or phrases relating to the particular holiday in question, so items like “Angel”, “Santa Claus” and “Yule” would be used for Christmas bingo, whereas as words like “Heart”, “Love” or “Romance” would be used for St. Valentine’s Day bingo.
Versions of bingo using custom bingo cards are also popular in education. Teachers can prepare them based around any subject or lesson plan, and can also vary game play, for example by calling out “clues” and requiring students to find the corresponding word or phrase. In language classes, bingo calls can be made in one language, and students required to match the corresponding word in another language.
In math classes, these can be printed with math problems in each square, and students can be required to write in the correct answer when an item is called, rather than merely tick off a square. Of course, even the standard game mechanics can be suitable for classroom use in the right situation – for example, an essential part of learning to read fluently is learning to quickly recognize common words (known as “sight words”) – and this can be practiced by playing sight word bingo.
By: Sunil Tanna
