How To Create the Perfect Bingo Game For Your Classroom

Creating Your Cards

To create your Bingo cards go to our creator and start customizing. For an overview of the whole creation process take a look at this introductory video:

A few things to keep in mind when creating your cards:

Choosing a Design

Make a good first impression and make players engage more with your game by matching the look of your cards with the theme of the vocabulary. There are plenty of backgrounds and headers to choose from.

You can also use a background and/or header of your own creation. Follow the instruction in the background and header section of the creator on how to do so.

Tip: To save ink of your printer choose a lighter background.

How To Control the Playing Time

The playing time is determined by

the total amount of vocabulary on the call sheet,
how long it takes to call out a word and
how many called words to expect due to the winning condition.

A typical Bingo game is won as soon as a player has a row, column or diagonal of called words. Here are a few rough estimations of the playing time in a classroom taken from experience:

number of players	age group	grid size	vocabulary	estimated playing time
4 - 10	Kindergarten / Pre-School	3x3 / 4x4	15 - 20	15 - 20 minutes
	Primary School	4x4 / 5x5	25 - 40
	Middle School upwards	5x5 / 6x6	35 - 60
25 - 35	Kindergarten / Pre-School	3x3 / 4x4	20 - 30	20 - 40 minutes
	Primary School	4x4 / 5x5	30 - 50
	Middle School upwards	5x5 / 6x6	40 - 75
50 - 100	Kindergarten / Pre-School	3x3 / 4x4	40 - 50	45 - 60 minutes
	Primary School	4x4 / 5x5	50 - 75
	Middle School upwards	5x5 / 6x6	75 - 100

You can make your games shorter by selecting fewer words or choosing a simpler winning pattern. Do the opposite to make the game longer. Here is an inspiration for alternative winning patterns. The fewer squares have to be filled and the more options there are on a grid to find the pattern the fewer tries and thus time it takes to fulfill the condition. For example, a 2x2 square is easier to fill in a 7x7 than a 4x4 grid with the same total amount of vocabulary.

Tip: Plan your games to be rather a bit too short than too long since in case of an early “Bingo” the game can just continue. More “Bingos” just mean more winners. And you get through more vocabulary, too.

Free Space or No Free Space?

The original game of Bingo has a free space in the center which directly counts as a called square. This is a good way to introduce players to what they have to do during the game by letting them tick off the free space at the beginning of the game. For experienced players, omit the free space and use the square for an additional word.

The Right Number of Cards and Card Size

Choose at minimum as many cards as there are players. It may be beneficial to create a game with a few cards in surplus just in case. For smaller groups you can always use a subset of the cards .

As for the card size, first make sure the squares on the cards are big enough for the players to be comfortably identified. DIN-A6 cards with a 7x7 grid is pretty small whereas DIN-A4 cards with a 3x3 grid is very big. Choose a size that fits the age of the players and the space on the desk in front of them while also keeping the amount of needed paper and ink at a minimum.

Printing Your Game

After you’ve downloaded the file with your game you have to print it.

Set the print quality to “high” when printing out your bingo cards.
Don’t forget to also print the call sheet as you need it to direct the game.
Laminate your Bingo cards if you plan to reuse them over the years. The Bingo cards become thicker, stronger and more durable when you add an additional sheet of paper while laminating them.
Thicker paper/cardboard is also a good option for printing bingo cards at your local copy/print shop. Especially, if you’re going to use the cards as a giveaway after an event or for advertising purposes of your institution.
File folders or envelopes come in handy when it comes to storing the cards.

Getting Ready To Play

Once you hold your printout in your hands you are almost ready to play. You still have to decide how to randomly select the words to call and how to let players mark matches on their cards. More on that in our guide on how to play the game.