“Put those down and listen,” said Judy. “I’m going to read the instructions:
from Jumanji
written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1981
Caldecott Medal winner, 1982
(accessed on Libby 12/28/25)
I grew up playing board games. They all came with their own foldable game boards, unique playing pieces, and rules that ranged from clear and simple to many varieties of complex.
Our family’s favorite game was Parcheesi. The complicated rules involved rolling doubles, skipping turns, and remembering what we did the last time we played. Besides, we could decide to whether or not to send our opponents back to “start,” sometimes resulting in foot-stomping and hurt feelings. “It’s only a game, for Pete’s sake!” someone would say, leading the game to a quick end.
We also played BINGO! A caller pulls a letter-number combo at random. Players check their cards and mark their spots. The first to complete a row or column yells “BINGO!” and wins.
Simple. Lots of ways to win means lots of winners! And no hurt feelings!
Besides the fun of winning BINGO!, playing can teach any subject from arithmetic to zoology! To teach addition, make an answer key with all the facts you want your kids to learn. Then make a unique card for each child. Call random facts from your answer key and have the kids mark their cards with each correct answer. When someone calls BINGO!, check their answers, and Bingo! you can start over or keep playing until everyone wins.
This works for language arts skills, science facts, and geography. Just read off a definition and have the students mark the right answers.
Even easier than that, use Google. MyFreeBingoCards.com is a source that will help you generate a set of unique cards.
It seems like BINGO! has always been around as a fund-raiser to benefit churches, synagogues, cultural events, local communities and governments. And as party entertainment.
And that’s almost true.
According to History.com, in the 6th century BCE (Before the Common Era), Athens, to prevent corruption in the government, chose its leaders not by elections, but by using “a system of random allotment…” Candidates’ names were placed in a device called a kleroterion. Small slots were carved in a stone slab into which identifying tokens for each candidate had been placed. Then, “black or white pebbles were funneled into a tube on the side of the slab. Candidates were either selected or dismissed depending on where the pebbles landed." Using the Kleroterion assured the drawing was truly random. You can see the ancient device here.
According LocalBingoHalls.com, modern Bingo had its start in Italy around 1530 CE (Common Era). The anticipation of winning is engaging, captivating, thrilling. Lotto’s social aspect plus its entertainment value to provided the government with a voluntary tax.
When the Italian government legalized and created a structure for the game, its popularity was assured and its official state lottery status guaranteed standard winnings.
“Merchants, diplomats, and travelers played a crucial role” in spreading Il Gioco del Lotto d’Italia, Italy’s Lotto to France and Germany in the 1700s and Britain by the 1800s. Soon, lottery games as well as gambling were common pastimes throughout Europe.
Lotto is a game of chance. The words Lotto and lottery stem from the Old English “hlot,” which referred to an object like a stone or a wood chip or dice, that when tossed was used to determine a person’s share, or allotment of something. It’s where the word lot, meaning a parcel of land, came from. Also think of a lot and lots of similar items, even personality traits.
In the 1930s Milton Bradley started selling an educational Lotto game. Its Sesame Street version, designed in the 1970s, is still in production.
Lotto and BINGO! are both games of chance. Prizes are awarded based on number/letter combinations chosen at random. In Lotto, individuals choose their own numbers and win if their selected numbers are chosen in a random drawing.
In BINGO! though, players are given a grid made of letter/number combinations. When a caller randomly announces a letter/number combination, players mark their cards when they have a match. The first player to complete the correct pattern wins.
An article from the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph (November 22, 1935) credits Hugh J. Ward, a Pittsburgh inventor, for creating the game after seeing a version being played in Toronto in 1916. Edwin Lowe, a toy seller, popularized it when he saw Ward’s game being played at a carnival in Atlanta.
In 1929, as the story goes, Lowe changed Beano, (named for the beans players used to cover the called numbers) when a player won and shouted out the word BINGO! by mistake.
Learning through play is still accomplished when teachers play BINGO! in their classrooms. Community organizations and religious institutions still raise funds by offering BINGO! games as entertainment. Governments still raise funds through lotteries.
December is designated as Bingo’s Birthday Month. I cannot verify when December was chosen, but, coincidentally, on December 2, 2025, a single Mega Millions ticket-holder won a $90 million jackpot and the latest Powerball winner walked away with almost $2 billion dollars a few days ago, on Christmas Eve.
I’m about halfway through A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Penguin Books, 2016). It’s a character study of Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat who finds himself on the wrong side of the Russian government. As it turns toward the Bolsheviks’ definition of communism, Rostov is sentenced to live out his days in a formerly-luxurious hotel. From the publisher, “…this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the Count’s endeavor to become a man of purpose” with humor, insight, and beautiful turns of phrase. Recommended.
--Be curious! (and if you play, play responsibly)
from Jumanji
written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1981
Caldecott Medal winner, 1982
(accessed on Libby 12/28/25)
I grew up playing board games. They all came with their own foldable game boards, unique playing pieces, and rules that ranged from clear and simple to many varieties of complex.
Our family’s favorite game was Parcheesi. The complicated rules involved rolling doubles, skipping turns, and remembering what we did the last time we played. Besides, we could decide to whether or not to send our opponents back to “start,” sometimes resulting in foot-stomping and hurt feelings. “It’s only a game, for Pete’s sake!” someone would say, leading the game to a quick end.
We also played BINGO! A caller pulls a letter-number combo at random. Players check their cards and mark their spots. The first to complete a row or column yells “BINGO!” and wins.
Simple. Lots of ways to win means lots of winners! And no hurt feelings!
Besides the fun of winning BINGO!, playing can teach any subject from arithmetic to zoology! To teach addition, make an answer key with all the facts you want your kids to learn. Then make a unique card for each child. Call random facts from your answer key and have the kids mark their cards with each correct answer. When someone calls BINGO!, check their answers, and Bingo! you can start over or keep playing until everyone wins.
This works for language arts skills, science facts, and geography. Just read off a definition and have the students mark the right answers.
Even easier than that, use Google. MyFreeBingoCards.com is a source that will help you generate a set of unique cards.
It seems like BINGO! has always been around as a fund-raiser to benefit churches, synagogues, cultural events, local communities and governments. And as party entertainment.
And that’s almost true.
According to History.com, in the 6th century BCE (Before the Common Era), Athens, to prevent corruption in the government, chose its leaders not by elections, but by using “a system of random allotment…” Candidates’ names were placed in a device called a kleroterion. Small slots were carved in a stone slab into which identifying tokens for each candidate had been placed. Then, “black or white pebbles were funneled into a tube on the side of the slab. Candidates were either selected or dismissed depending on where the pebbles landed." Using the Kleroterion assured the drawing was truly random. You can see the ancient device here.
According LocalBingoHalls.com, modern Bingo had its start in Italy around 1530 CE (Common Era). The anticipation of winning is engaging, captivating, thrilling. Lotto’s social aspect plus its entertainment value to provided the government with a voluntary tax.
When the Italian government legalized and created a structure for the game, its popularity was assured and its official state lottery status guaranteed standard winnings.
“Merchants, diplomats, and travelers played a crucial role” in spreading Il Gioco del Lotto d’Italia, Italy’s Lotto to France and Germany in the 1700s and Britain by the 1800s. Soon, lottery games as well as gambling were common pastimes throughout Europe.
Lotto is a game of chance. The words Lotto and lottery stem from the Old English “hlot,” which referred to an object like a stone or a wood chip or dice, that when tossed was used to determine a person’s share, or allotment of something. It’s where the word lot, meaning a parcel of land, came from. Also think of a lot and lots of similar items, even personality traits.
In the 1930s Milton Bradley started selling an educational Lotto game. Its Sesame Street version, designed in the 1970s, is still in production.
Lotto and BINGO! are both games of chance. Prizes are awarded based on number/letter combinations chosen at random. In Lotto, individuals choose their own numbers and win if their selected numbers are chosen in a random drawing.
In BINGO! though, players are given a grid made of letter/number combinations. When a caller randomly announces a letter/number combination, players mark their cards when they have a match. The first player to complete the correct pattern wins.
An article from the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph (November 22, 1935) credits Hugh J. Ward, a Pittsburgh inventor, for creating the game after seeing a version being played in Toronto in 1916. Edwin Lowe, a toy seller, popularized it when he saw Ward’s game being played at a carnival in Atlanta.
In 1929, as the story goes, Lowe changed Beano, (named for the beans players used to cover the called numbers) when a player won and shouted out the word BINGO! by mistake.
Learning through play is still accomplished when teachers play BINGO! in their classrooms. Community organizations and religious institutions still raise funds by offering BINGO! games as entertainment. Governments still raise funds through lotteries.
December is designated as Bingo’s Birthday Month. I cannot verify when December was chosen, but, coincidentally, on December 2, 2025, a single Mega Millions ticket-holder won a $90 million jackpot and the latest Powerball winner walked away with almost $2 billion dollars a few days ago, on Christmas Eve.
I’m about halfway through A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Penguin Books, 2016). It’s a character study of Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat who finds himself on the wrong side of the Russian government. As it turns toward the Bolsheviks’ definition of communism, Rostov is sentenced to live out his days in a formerly-luxurious hotel. From the publisher, “…this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the Count’s endeavor to become a man of purpose” with humor, insight, and beautiful turns of phrase. Recommended.
--Be curious! (and if you play, play responsibly)
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