Valentine Bingo

I made this Valentine Bingo game a few years back for my son's pre-school Valentine's Day party. This is a wonderful game for pre-schoolers to exercise their visual cognitive skills. It focuses on color (or pattern), shape, and size.

I don't have the parts to step you through a demo tutorial, but I don't think there's anything at all complicated about it anyway.

I made mine out of craft foam, but it could be made using cardboard/paper or felt, too.

I cut the game boards out of craft foam, then used a black marker to draw out a grid of 16 squares.

I happened to find a bucket of mixed heart shapes, so I didn't have to cut anything out myself. Yippee!

I needed 16 different shapes but the bucket only came with 12, so I drew smiley faces on a couple, and flipped over a couple of others. You could also use different Valentine-themed shapes. I positioned the shapes onto the cards and glued in place, making sure each of the cards was arranged in a unique pattern.

Then I cut a small square of craft foam and glued it to a craft stick.

I glued one of the shapes onto the front of the square of craft foam.

I repeated this for each of the shapes, until I had a 16 sticks with 16 different shapes.

To call a number, I blindly picked a stick and then showed the heart to the students. I helped them out a bit by asking them to notice the color and shape, assisting as necessary.

For cover-ups, we used blue foam hearts. You could also use candies or kisses or pennies or any other items.

These were easy to make and worked wonderfully well for their party. It was a quiet game that encouraged learning without them even knowing it. And we even offered simple prizes for the winners, which always makes it more fun!

Hope you like it! My pre-schoolers sure did!

And be sure to check out the endless list of inspirational ideas at my home page childmade.com.




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