Friend Bingo is an idea I got from a workshop I attended once and it’s a great activity for the beginning of the year. It helps children learn the names of their new friends and teachers. It also serves as a kind of observational assessment because it helps me see which children have not learned any or very few names. Maybe that child needs some guidance making friends.
Most importantly, children love to play Friend Bingo!
How to make the game:
Create a table with 2 rows, 4 columns in a Word document. Adjust the table cells to the size you want. A little tip: Highlight your entire table, click Layout, Auto Fit, & Fixed Column Width (Word version 2007)– that will keep the images you insert the size you want them. Then insert photos of your students into the cells, print the bingo cards on cardstock, and laminate. Also make a set of “calling cards” — photo cards that the “caller” (you or the children) can use to call out names during the game. We used Unifix cubes as our bingo markers.
To save yourself some work, you can use this template if it is compatible with your computer. This is a Word Doc file:
About Karen Cox
yes! i love this.
i just made pictoral directories which would work perfectly.
thanks.
This is a great idea! Your site always has very innovative activities. Thanks so much for sharing them!
Thanks!
I also teach Georgia pre-k. In order to foster a sense of community, we had the students say something kind about the person that was drawn before they could mark it. When a challenging student had to say something nice about himself it was a special moment for him and the teacher.
Thanks, Monica!
Love this!! We are definitely going to do this!
Love your friend bingo but I need 5 columns and 3 rows. I also want to add a text box for the child’s name, but my rows won’t stay fixed. The columns remain fixed but not the rows. Can anyone help please. Thanks, Dottie