Camping bingo can provide kids with education and entertainment.
The call of the wild may lure some kids to give camping a try. However, after the tent is set-up, the fire is stoked and the marshmallows are roasted, adults may need help keeping kids entertained. A familiar game like "Bingo" can help make kids aware of their natural surroundings and teach kids about wilderness and camping equipment.
Ready-made
Several educational resource sites on the Internet can generate free, customized bingo cards. These websites are generated toward teachers, but can be used by parents, as well. After making a list of camping related keywords, like tent, fishing pole, sleeping bag, and pine tree, for example, the website generates various versions of bingo cards for the user to print out at home. The user can cut out a master list of the words for the bingo caller to pull from a hat. Squares of paper, rocks or plastic poker chips can be used as spot markers.
Homemade: Making the Grids
As an alternative to printing out ready-made bingo cards, players can make their own cards for free, as well. The first step requires designing grids on pieces of paper. A traditional bingo card consists of five square spaces across by five square spaces down. Each space is about a square inch. The word Bingo is written in the spaces on the top line of the grid.
Homemade: Designing the Spaces
Pictures can be used rather than words to fill in Bingo spaces.
For kids who can read, filling in the bingo spaces on the grid can be as simple as writing camping keywords in the spaces, like hot dogs, Girl Scouts, flashlight and bug spray. Vary the order of the words written so that each bingo card is different. Alternatively, for kids that have not yet learned to read, the bingo spaces could be filled in with a picture or a drawing of a camping keyword. Cut out a master list of spaces for the bingo caller and provide some sort of space markers to play the game.
Rules
There are two ways in which camping bingo can be played with youngsters. One way already mentioned is to have a bingo caller pull words or pictures from a hat. Kids can mark the coordinating spot on their bingo card until a bingo is achieved--five spaces marked in a row either up and down, across or diagonally. An alternative way to play bingo is to have the kids mark their cards throughout the day based on what they observe while camping. For instance, when a child sees a worm in the dirt or a fish jump in the lake, they can mark that spot on their bingo card. The first kid to mark five spots in a row wins.
Tags: bingo card, bingo caller, bingo cards, bingo caller pull, caller pull, five square, five square spaces