Winter bingo uses snowy-season words (mittens, icicles, polar bears) instead of numbers: the teacher calls a word, children cover it if it’s on their grid, and the first complete line wins. The 36 words on these 4×4 cards leave out every holiday, so one printout serves a December class party, an indoor recess on a snow day and a gray week in February.
Classroom management
- Print a class set plus one spare. Every child gets a different grid, which ends the “I’ll just copy my neighbor” problem.
- Choose markers you can collect quickly. Counters or bingo chips beat cereal, which disappears.
- Project the caller. On the interactive whiteboard, Call the game shows each word large enough for the back row, and with Read calls aloud ticked, the browser says it as well, freeing you to walk the room.
- Verify wins at your desk with the number printed in the card’s corner: the checker lights up which of that child’s words have come up.
A line game takes a few minutes; carry on to a full card when you need to fill the time before the bell.
Matching the cards to the class
- Preschool and kindergarten: 3×3 cards with a free middle square; the pictures above the words do the reading for them, and holding up the real object with each call helps too.
- Grades 1–2: the 4×4 cards this page opens with.
- Grade 3 and up: 5×5 cards, or make it harder by giving a clue instead of the word (“I sleep all winter” for Hibernate, “the lights in the night sky near the poles” for Northern lights).
Turning it into a lesson
The list mixes clothing, weather, animals and activities, which makes it easy to sort after the game: ask the class which words are animals (Penguin, Polar bear, Arctic fox, Owl, Cardinal), which keep us warm, and which only happen when it’s freezing. Older children can write a sentence with each word on their winning line.
To use your class’s own vocabulary or spelling words instead, replace the list, one word per line: 16 is enough for 4×4. For reading practice, the sight word bingo page has all five Dolch lists, and the name tracing worksheet makes handwriting sheets for each child.
The 36 words on these cards
- Snowflake
- Snowman
- Snowball
- Snow angel
- Sled
- Ice skates
- Skis
- Mittens
- Scarf
- Hat
- Boots
- Earmuffs
- Coat
- Hot cocoa
- Marshmallows
- Soup
- Blanket
- Fireplace
- Icicle
- Frost
- Shovel
- Snowplow
- Igloo
- Penguin
- Polar bear
- Arctic fox
- Owl
- Cardinal
- Pine tree
- Pine cone
- Hibernate
- Footprints
- Snow day
- Ice
- Northern lights
- Wind
When you reload, this page goes back to the set-up described here, with the same card set code, so printing again gives the same cards. The number of cards, the paper size and, where this page doesn’t set them, cards per page and color are remembered from the generator. To keep an edited list, use Share result, or start from the bingo card generator, which remembers everything.