Synonym & Antonym Bingo

I decided that Bingo is really the best way to spend a groggy Monday morning. I found an old set of sight word bingo cards in my file cabinet that I used for my kindergarten groups this morning. Then I made a quick set of synonym and antonym bingo cards for my first grade groups. Here are the synonym bingo cards and calling words:

Synonym Bingo Cards


These are the synonym calling words, which I wrote on index cards:
small, sofa, difficult, sleepy, leave, mad, silly, trash, clever, present, glad, strange, under, cook, rest, lady, ill, road, big, close, yell, home, infant, fast


Here are the antonym bingo cards:
Antonym Bingo Cards

And these are the antonym calling words that I used:
question, winter, sad, late, soft, woman, left, big, full, top, wet, long, loud, strong, new, day, true, boy, win, go, after, push, dirty, hot

One more thing... I just discovered an awesome website that I want to share! I use this bingo site to create custom bingo cards. It is free, and you can download ten cards in one PDF file. If you want more than ten different cards, you just click the "make my bingo cards" link a second time and the site will generate ten different cards. I wanted to post all 20 cards from each bingo game here on my blog, but I didn't want to upload four separate PDF files. A quick Google search led me to this amazing site that lets you merge PDF files! And it's free! You just upload the PDF files you want to merge, click the "join" button, and then download your new file! I think I am a little too excited about this...

Anyway, happy bingo-playing and file-merging to you!

Bingo, part two

I'm pretty proud of myself today... first, I came up with a new idea for a bingo game and put the whole thing together in about ten minutes. Then I learned how to upload PDF files onto Blogger! In honor of this monumental occasion, here are the bingo cards I made today on the website I shared yesterday (http://www.print-bingo.com)
Letter Sound Bingo

There it is... Letter Sound Bingo, courtesy of Print-Bingo.com! I made a set of word cards with the target sound underlined, and as I randomly drew the cards out of a box I would say something like, "This is the beginning sound in the word 'sad,'" or "This is the middle sound in the word 'pet.'" I threw "sh," "th," "ch," "wh," and "qu" in there just to make it a little more challenging. I would share the word cards I made as well, but I just drew them on construction paper at the last minute so they're really not that fancy. The kids really seemed to love the game, and it was a great way to start the year and begin assessing their phonics skills!

Bingo is my middle name-o

Tomorrow morning I am starting my small group rotations in senior kindergarten. I do something different in each of the three classes, but it basically boils down to pulling leveled groups into the hall for various reading and math activities. For my very first rotation, I'm planning to do something simple that will give me a quick baseline look at the students' reading abilities.

Fun fact about me: I love to play bingo. I will create a bingo game for any skill, and I think I'm pretty good at making the game a little more challenging than just finding a number and trying to get five chips in a row. Later in the year I'll pull out my old standbys--Time Bingo and Money Bingo--but for now I'm sticking with simple sight words.

I thought this would be a good time to share one of my favorite online resources: http://www.print-bingo.com/
This site lets you create custom bingo cards for any skill! Click on the link on the homepage that says "I've read enough. Let me generate bingo cards!" Then click "Custom bingo cards with your own word or phrase list." (There are templates you can search through, but I've never looked at them.) You can design every aspect of your game: whether there's a free space in the middle, the text inside the free space... you can even change the top of the card so it says something other than "bingo." (My money bingo game says "money" at the top!) The bingo cards are uploaded to your computer as a five-page PDF, with two cards per page. If you need more than ten cards, just close the PDF, click the "create cards" button again, and it will generate ten totally different cards using the same word list. So easy!

I have so many ideas for Bingo games that are just waiting to be made! You could do states and capitals bingo, where you call out the state and the students have to find the capital on their cards (or vice-versa); vocabulary bingo (call out the definition, they look for the word); maybe even periodic table bingo (not that we have a need for that in early childhood!)

I'll share my time and money bingo cards once I figure out how to post PDF files on my blog!