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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Students of all ages love to play bingo: it’s quick to learn, requires no skill and the thrill of seeing your board fill up never gets old. The permission from your teacher to shout “BINGO” across the room is also pretty fun. This unicorn theme alphabet bingo pack is a fun and engaging way to help preschool students master their letters before starting kindergarten.
The Importance of Preschool Letter Recognition
Mastering the skill of recognizing all 26 letters in the English alphabet, both upper and lower case, is one of the big tasks facing any preschool teacher.
While you will always need to teach the mechanics of matching the letter to the sounds it makes, you need to find fun ways to teach letter recognition to help keep the essential repetition engaging.
By having your students play letter recognition games like ABC bingo, you give them opportunities to learn important social interactions like turn taking while also reinforcing the shapes and sounds of each letter.
How To Use Unicorn Alphabet Bingo
For this activity you will need:
Paper
Printer
Bingo tokens
Optional: laminator and dry erase markers
If you don’t have the materials needed, don’t sweat! You can get it delivered to your doorstep really quickly with Amazon Prime. You can get a 30-day free trial here.
This ABC bingo pack comes with 4 readymade bingo boards with 25 squares on each one (Y and Z occupy the same space, so students can double on that square as needed).
Printing these as one per page should keep the font easy to read, and laminating them will allow you to reuse them multiple times. The letter cards contain each letter, both in upper and lowercase.
You can simply print these with your standard settings, and you’ll get 4 to a page, but if you’re printing multiple copies so students can play independently, you may want to print two pages to one physical page to make the playing cards smaller.
Fun Ways To Teach Letter Recognition
All students will be excited to play with this unicorn theme alphabet bingo game; the bright colors and cute pictures will make it a firm classroom favorite. Here’s some ideas to help get the most out of this letter recognition game:
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Start with uppercase only – many preschool teachers start with uppercase letter recognition only because there is less variation in type fonts and handwriting about how these letters are written. Playing with just the uppercase letter cards to draw from reduces the playing time of this bingo game, and also removes any student confusion about what to do if both the uppercase and lowercase version of each letter is picked.
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Play for three – a typical game of unicorn alphabet bingo ends when one player makes a line of five, either horizontally, vertically or diagonally. However, this can be frustrating for preschool students who end without a line, so you can make a longer game by declaring the winner the person who makes three lines instead of just one.
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Double lines – as your preschool students become more confident with their uppercase letter recognition, you can extend their learning by asking them to pick out the lowercase version of the letter they just heard and pile it on top. You could also play with all 52 cards and make it so that they can only call bingo when they have both the upper and lowercase version of each letter.
This game is also available as digital Boom Cards which can be used with Seesaw, Google Classroom and other distance learning platforms. Grab these Internet task cards here.
HUGE bundle of no-prep alphabet worksheets!
There are 12 activities for each letter:
1) Alphabet Draw The Scene – Trace the upper and lowercase letters then imagine and draw the rest of the scene. For example, draw what the astronaut sees in space.
2) Letter Detective – Find and color in the boxes with the letter shown.
3) Cut, Sort and Stick –Differentiate upper and lowercase letter and sort them into the correct column.
4) Alphabet Puzzle Fun Sheets – No prep combination worksheets. Trace the letter, find the letter, draw something that begins with the letter and 4-piece puzzles to form the letter.
5) Alphabet Beginning Sounds Coloring Pages – Each letter coloring page comes with at least 6 objects.
6) Dot The Letter – These can be used with dot markers or dot stickers.
7) Q Tip Letters – Use a cotton bud to paint the letter.
8) Alphabet Handwriting – Correct letter writing technique is shown with space to trace upper and lowercase letters.
9) Letter Mazes – Identify the letters correctly to find the end of the maze.
10) Alphabet Playdough Mats – Fine motor strengthening activity to form the letters.
11) Alphabet Punch Cards – Letters are on the edge of the page for single hole punching or using with clips.
12) Alphabet Beginning Sound Clip Cards – 8 different sets included. Match the letter to the object (2 sets each for upper and lowercase) and match the object to the letter (2 sets each for upper and lowercase).
Educational Tools For Your Classroom:
Browse My Most Popular Literacy Activites:
1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips – Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.
2) Alphabet Beginning Sound Coloring Pages – Watch your child become more familiar with each letter of the alphabet as they practice coloring in the objects with that beginning sound.
3) Tommy Turkey’s Alphabet Pie – This turkey-themed letter recognition activity is so simple to prep and makes a great file folder game!
4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats – Just print out the playing mats and ask your child to form the letters out using the playdough provided.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover Letters – Work on letter recognition any time of the year!
6) Werewolf Spin and Cover – Kids will race to find all the letters on their mat this Halloween.
7) Bunny Burrows Game – Fun game for small groups or circle time where students will catch a bunny and say out the sound.
8) Letter-saurus Fossil Digging – Dinosaur lovers will enjoy being a pretend paleontologist and finding all the letters.
9) Alphabet Handwriting Worksheets – Practice lowercase and capital letters with these print-and-go pages.
10) Rainy Day Alphabet – 1 printable, many ways to use.
