First off, I am going to say that I got this idea from a book Cool Parks & Trails- Great Things to Do in the Great Outdoors . The boys and I went to the library to stock up on DVDs for the 17 hour road trip to Colorado. When I saw this book on the end cap, I couldn’t resist. So instead of packing for the trip, which I was suppose to be doing, we got a little derailed. When we got home I started making the bingo sheets. To my delight, when the boys saw what I was doing, they wanted to make their own. Thank goodness!
So I made two. One for daddy and I, and the boys made their own. Rider’s did get a bit comical. While Baron drew animal tracks, birds, and flowers on his, Rider had things like treasure map, meteor, and heart on his. I got a little anxious about packing towards the end and drew a sun, clouds, and tree on ours. Later Jeremy joked that you could just open your eyes and scream BINGO! After all our bingo cards were ready to go, I laminated them with my Purple Cows Laminator -affiliate link- so we could play this game every time we go camping or hiking.
What you will need:
- card stock
- ruler
- scissors
- markers
- clear laminate
- dry-erase markers (Which I forgot, so we improvised with oil pastels.)
What to do:
- Cut out an 8-inch square of card stock. Divide it into a grid of 16 equal squares using ruler.
- Draw something found in nature on each square. Examples include butterflies, trees, feather, river…
- Laminate using a laminator or laminating squares.
- Repeat steps 1 through 3 to make bingo cards. Make sure they are all different.
- Take the bingo cards on your hike. Mark off the items that you see. Try to complete a row across, down, or diagonally.
We are changing it up a little on our trip. We all marked off everything that we saw on the hike and are continuing to look for items through out the trip. The first one to spot everything on their card wins. Since I doubt Rider will see a meteor, I am afraid he will be out of luck. This is a great game for a camping trip or a hike. Have fun!
