In many ways, being a home school teacher is just like being a teacher at a public school. But in other ways, there is a big difference. A home school teacher has much more freedom to choose fun, educational strategies for teaching, whereas most public school teachers have to stick to a certain curriculum, with little allowance for changing things up a bit. So, with that freedom, make an interchangeable game and two or more students can learn their spelling words while playing an exciting game in the classroom.
Make cardstock squares to create bingo cards. You’ll need one card for each child. Don’t have any cardstock? Use cardboard, then. Draw with a marker to create a grid of squares on each card. You can make these as large or small as you want so long as there are enough squares on the card to cover at least half of the spelling words for the day or week. Also, remember that, if you make the squares too small there might not be enough room to write the spelling words. Write “Free” on the middle space of each card or forego this step.
Cut small squares from regular paper, construction paper or another type. Cut the pieces into the same size as the squares on the cardstock. Write a spelling word on each paper square. Use double-sided tape to stick some of the spelling words to each card. Make sure that some of the words appear on more than one card.
You, as the teacher, can call the spelling words out and let kids mark them with marbles or even paper circles. Besides just calling the words out, and letting kids mark them, you can also play other games. For example, to teach definitions, you can read the definition of a word and kids must look at the card to find the word which matches the definition. Or, instead of definitions, say something like “leprechauns love this color” for the spelling word “green”.
The bingo game is played like any other bingo game. Announce at the beginning whether the winner will need all in a row, diagonal, just corners or another win. After one child wins, trade the cards amongst the kids, and play another round.
Each week you can just write down more spelling words and stick them to the bingo cards. Simply remove the old words and replace them with the new ones. The kids will have a lot of fun, week after week, learning spelling, definitions and more.