Friday, May 24, 2013

Summer Bingo

Summer is officially here at the Stewart household.  We are one day into summer vacation and I have already heard the dreaded words, "I'm Bored".  Oh No...this Momma is not going there so soon into summer.

I remembered a past post by Stacy Julian about Summer Bingo.  At the time, Parker was too little to do that but I remembered thinking "Genius!"  So, I looked it up on-line last night, did a bit of quick research on Pinterest this morning and ta-da we have our own Summer Bingo here now.  Parker is super excited.  I can't wait to see how this works and I might have to change up the rules a bit as we move through the summer but I am going to kick this off on Sunday morning.


I first made a Bingo card in MS Word (5 columns up and down) with activities that encourage help around the house and keeping her school skills fresh.  I will make a new card each week and some weeks will be easier and more fun than others (like when we are at the beach).  

I then made up rules based off my research.  Our rules for the game are:

1.   Before playing bingo each day:
a.       Be clean and dressed
b.      Eat breakfast
c.       Clean up your breakfast mess
d.      Turn off the lights in your bedroom and bathroom
2.      You get a new card on each Sunday
3.      You get one free sticker-you can place it on any square (but once you use it one week, you can’t put on same square again)
4.      You have to tell Mom/Dad when you are working on a square-we give the stickers out
5.      Each time you complete 5 in a row, you receive a ticket

Ticket Redemption:
1 Ticket= 30 minutes of either: water play, computer time, or messy craft time
2 Tickets= Movie Night
3 Tickets= Trip to Dollar Store
4 Tickets= Ice Cream Night
5 Tickets= Play date or Sleepover
Blackout= Special event from bucket + $5
Blackout + 2 Bonus Tickets= Fun outing (CDM, Water Park, etc) + $5
Blackout every week during summer= Huge fun outing (TBD)

You can earn bonus tickets by:
1 Bonus Ticket-Completing a full week in your workbook
1 Bonus Ticket-Read for 50 minutes over the course of the week

We are still working out what the "huge fun outing" will be.  Perhaps a trip to the American Girl Doll store, an amusement park or some other really big motivating reward.  

I then created some special event tickets as the blackout rewards. Things like an ice cream date with Dad, pool time, baseball game, etc.

I also made up some tickets for when she gets a "Bingo".  I have placed these in jars up where little hands can't reach.  I'll keep the stickers there too for when she completes a square.  

Here's to summer and hoping this wards off boredom and helps encourage Parker to help around the house and work on summer activities to keep her fresh for first grade.