Stamp Bingo is very popular with children aged 7-11 years. You can make a bingo game with a theme.

Making the cards.
1. First decide how many stamps you would like on each card. We have used 15 stamps. Put the same amount of stamps on each card. Then work out how many cards you would like to make, one card per child.

Hint
The more stamps you have on the cards the longer the game will take to play.

2. Glue stamps to the cardboard. The size of the cardboard in figure 1 & 2 is 20cm x 15cm.The size of the cardboard will depend on the size and the amount of the stamps you use.

Hint
Notice in figure 1 and 2 they have 10 stamps that are the same on each card. There are 15 cards in his Bird Bingo game all have 10 stamps in common on each card.

3. To preserve the cards they can be laminated.

Making the bird names.
4. Type up the names of the birds and the face value of the stamp. Print out and cut them up. These can also be laminated.

Making the cardboard circles

5. Using cardboard cut out plenty of circles. The ones in figure 4 are 2.5cm in diameter.

Hint
Trace around a coin to make the circles.

Figure 2

How to play the game

1. Each person is given a card

2. You will need some one to call out the bird names and face values (figure3). These can be pulled out of a bag of turn upside down on a table.

3. When a bird name is called out and someone has it on their card they then put a circle (figure4) on it.

4. The winner is the first person to cover all the stamps on the card

Figure 3, Bird names

Aim of the Game: To encourage children to look carefully at the stamps by having them read the names of the birds, face values and countries.

Hint
You can make this game a little more trickier by using stamps with birds that have similar names. e.g. King Parrot, Golden Shouldered Parrot. Or different stamps with the same bird but with different face values or different currency (as for Australian stamps, Pounds, Shillings and pence and decimal currency)

Figure 4, circles made out of cardboard