Interactive Animal Classification and Habitat Bingo Game for Elementary Science Class

I invented this game when our children we were homeschooling them. I'm always looking for hands-on, interactive ways to teach concepts. To explore animal classification, habitats and elementary life science and biology, we played animal bingo. My children have always owned an impressive collection of stuffed animals, toy animals and plastic animals. I put their toy animal collection to use for our preschool and elementary science class in home school in this way.You can easily play this game with a classroom of children, too.

First, collect stuffed animals, toy animals, plastic animals and even magazines with pictures of animals. Use your National Geographic, Big Back Yard and Ranger Rick magazines. Next, make a large Bingo board on the floor with masking tape. Each square should be about 8x12 inches large. Make large signs from recycled cardboard for each category on the bingo board.

If you are studying animal classification, you will make categories labeled:

MAMMAL
BIRD
FISH
REPTILE
AMPHIBIAN
INSECT

If you are studying habitats or biomes in science, list the biomes you are exploring:

DESERT
RAIN FOREST
EASTERN WOODLAND
OCEAN
WETLAND MARSH
POND
SAVANNAH GRASSLAND

Play animal bingo in one of several ways. Call out a category and let students come up and select a toy animal to place in one of the boxes under the category. You can also give each child a blank bingo sheet. For each animal in his collection, he writes a small label card. If the animal is called, he places it the correct category. You might also call categories and let him choose which, if any of the animals he has, to put in the category. The last way to play this animal bingo game (and also the most abstract and least hands-on) is to pass out animal word cards and play it that way. My students and children prefer sorting their toy animals. It was pretty cute to see Pooh bear sitting in the WOODLAND and Minnie Mouse in the MAMMAL category. This game works well for group instruction; students learn from each other and great discussion ensues.