When it comes to doing the alphabet and learning letters, preschoolers are like little sponges. We don’t give them nearly enough credit. My daughter has learnt to write her name within only a few weeks. She is now printing letters and recognising what sounds they make. This letter bingo game is a great tool to use for letter recognition in young children.

Children need to know letter names as well as letter sounds to experience ease in learning how to read.

Even if your child isn’t at that stage where they are writing their own name, they will no doubt be pointing to letters and asking what words say.

Setting Up Letter Bingo

To set this activity up, you don’t need any special tools or equipment. So long as you have counters and our FREE printable playing boards, you are set.

If you are making your own boards like we did cut out large squares and draw horizontal and vertical lines across the sheets to make a grid. You can have as many squares as you’d like. We made our grid into 16 squares but you can do less. Sometimes preschoolers lose concentration or interest in activities if they are too long.

We cut out small squares and wrote letters of the alphabet on each square.

Playing The Game

The aim of the game is to pick a letter from the bowl and check to see if you have that letter on your board. If you see the letter on your grid, then place a counter on that letter.

When writing the letters on the grids, you can just write letters at random. So for instance, both or all players might have an S on their board. This is okay and would just give each player a counter for that letter.

Calling All Letters!

As you are playing the game, have your child call out the letter they take out the bowl. If they aren’t sure then you can tell them what that letter is. Remember that repetition is key when children are getting familiar with letters.

Recognizing that they have that letter on their board is one thing, but actually being able to relay the letter they have is another.

Always use encouragement when your child guesses a letter. Kids love it when you cheer them on and give them praise.

When your board is full and you have found all your letters, shout out BINGO! If your kids have played bingo before they will know how this works. And that’s it! A pretty simple learning game that will have the kids become familiar with their letters.

Some Other Ideas

Have your child find something in the room that starts with that letter sound.
Get your child to write the letter they pick up by tracing it with their finger.
Try using upper case AND lower case letters for the game. Our Printable boards below are provided with upper and lower case.
Ask your child if they have any letters in their name, on their board.
Have your child spell out a word with some of the letters they have on their boards, eg; CAT

FREE PRINTABLES are attached below for your convenience. Just click on the grid(s) below! ⬇⬇

How to use these printables:

The grids can be laminated so that you can write and erase letters on them as many times as you wish.
There are two different grids with a different number of squares. Play at a level your child can manage.
There are both upper case AND lower case letters for a different variety of this game.
These grids can be printed out and used for other bingo ideas if you wanted to change things up a bit!