Book Bingo

Book Bingo is a fantastic activity that is suitable for kids of all ages, regardless of weather or lockdown status. Book Bingo can be done as a school holiday activity, a class-based activity or even as a fundraiser as part of Book Week celebrations. You can run it as an online activity/event and I have provided alternative rules for a book scavenger hunt as well.

Find out more about how to host a read-a-thon here.

Rules of Book Bingo

The basic rules for bingo are that you cross off squares as you achieve them, and call Bingo when you have five crosses in a row, column or diagonal.

‘Proof’ of achievement can be done in various ways such as taking a photo of the child with the book (or performing the action) or logging the title and author of the book. For older kids, you could ask them to write a brief summary or review of the book if you want to be sure they actually read it.

Each book can only be used once on the grid – for example, you couldn’t use ‘Becoming’ by Michelle Obama for all four squares: one word title, autobiography, written by a person of colour and female author. You could only use the book once.

Here are three Book Bingo Cards which you can download and use for free.

Book Bingo for Kids – suitable for kids as young as Kindy and Prep, it doesn’t even matter if the children can’t read  yet, as this game is all about finding characters, colours, images and simple counting.

‘Action’ Book Bingo – this is an all ages games where bingo squares are marked off for reading books in certain places, poses, situations or outfits.

Book Bingo for Teens – suitable for Year 5 and up, the bingo squares require a more comprehensive understanding of the books and their themes.

Book Scavenger Hunt Alternative 

An alternative to the standard Bingo rules which requires only five books to be read, the Book Scavenger Hunt alternative requires kids to tick off as many of the squares as possible, but they do not need to be in a single row or column. It encourages kids to read even more books, but they don’t need to be worried about getting stuck on a tricky square.

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Author: Shannon Meyerkort