Christmas Bingo for Kids (Free Easy Printable Cards)

The word list

Every word names something a young child can picture and point to. Most are one syllable, and the longest ones (snowflake, reindeer, stocking) are words that children hear all December.

How to play bingo with 4 to 7 year olds

Little children love bingo for the same reason adults do: the suspense of waiting for one more square. What they cannot do yet is scan 24 squares of small text, so these cards are deliberately plain: sixteen big words, one card to a page, and a list of things every child already knows.

1. Give each child a card and a pile of markers that will not roll away. Dried beans, large buttons, cotton balls or torn bits of green paper all work, and so does a crayon to color the square in.
2. Read a word from the caller sheet slowly, and say it twice. For the youngest players, hold up a picture or point to the real object: a bell, a sock, a pine cone.
3. Children look for the word on their card. Encourage sounding it out, and let neighbors help.
4. Four in a row wins. With a 4 by 4 card that usually happens within eight or nine calls, which is about as long as a five year old wants to wait.
5. Clear the cards, swap them between children and play again. Three rounds take about fifteen minutes.

Each card uses 16 of the 36 words, so most children will not have the word you call. Teach the phrase "not on mine" early so the quiet ones have something to say.

Easier and harder versions

• Picture cards for pre-readers. Draw or stick a tiny picture in the corner of each square before the party. Children match the picture and learn the word at the same time.
• Three by three for the youngest. Switch the grid to 3 by 3 with a free center square and keep the ten simplest words. A round lasts a few calls, so you can play many.
• Say it and act it. Before covering a square, the child acts the word out: ringing a bell, pulling a sled, shivering in the snow.
• Class spelling bingo. For first graders, the class spells the word aloud together before anyone covers the square.

Tips for parents and teachers

Keep the markers big. Small candies are a choking risk for the youngest siblings at a family party, so use cotton balls, large pom-poms or crayon scribbles.

Let children win often. A 4 by 4 card ends quickly, a sticker for every winner means nobody waits long, and a tiny treat for everyone at the end stops the tears when one child never gets a line.

Not every family in a classroom keeps Christmas. The list already includes snow, mitten, scarf and cocoa so every child has squares to hunt for, and you can remove any word that does not suit your group.

Printing big, simple cards

Large print is on by default, which prints one card per page with the biggest text that fits. Plain white paper is fine, and ink saver mode keeps the cost of a class set low.

To make the cards last the season, print on cardstock and laminate, then let children mark squares with a dry-erase marker. The caller sheet prints on its own page in the order you will read the words.