Barnyard Bingo

Barnyard Bingo is one of the first games I bought when I started out working with kids with special needs. It has stayed with me all of these years and not only continues to be a hit with kids, but the game itself is still in great shape. Barnyard Bingo contains a barn, 12 animal tokens, and 4 fence cards. A lever releases the animal tokens from the barn while making a catchy “boing” sound. I love the quality of this game. I am comfortable lending it out to families knowing it will come back in the same condition I leave it in. I love the simplicity – opening the lever releases an animal that can be matched by animal and colour to the fence cards. It is simple enough that it can be used as a first game for little ones. Kids love the sound (“Boing!”) the lever makes when it opens! Putting the animals back into the barn when we’re finished is also a lot of fun.

Disclaimer: Fisher Price has redesigned this game since I bought my original and I have not tried the new design.

Speech Activities

If you’re looking for a simple game to go along with speech practice, this is it. Before taking a turn, have your child practice a word or sound. You can use words related to the game (see below) or any words your child is working on. See speech chart for target words.

Language Activities:

Vocabulary

Basic vocabulary – farm animals (cow, sheep, pig, chicken), animal noises, colours
Describing – talk about the animals. What they look like, feel like, sound like, where they live, what they eat, how they move. You can also focus on colours – first learning them (the tokens are cards are red, blue, yellow, green), then thinking about other things that are the same colour (“The sky is blue too!”)
Categories – talk about farm animals while you are playing. Think about other kinds of animals – zoo animals, water animals, bugs, etc. Talk about different names for each farm animal (male/female/young) – e.g., Horse – Stallion/Mare/Foal, Sheep – Ram/Ewe/Lamb, Goose – Gander/Goose/Gosling, Duck – Drake/Duck/Duckling, Cattle – Bull/Cow/Calf, Chicken – Rooster/Hen/Chick
Comparing and contrasting – compare the animals. Which one is the tallest? Which one is the loudest? Which one is your favourite? How many have wings? How many have legs? Two legs? Four legs?
Fancy words – expand your child’s vocabulary using fancy words: agriculture, coop, cattle, dairy, ewe, graze, pasture, shears.

Grammar

Prepositions –
- Talk about where the animals are. Put them in the barn, take them out of the barn, put them on your fence card.
- Play a hiding game – hide the tokens around the room (in, on, under, behind, in front, etc.) and talk about where you found them.
- Use the farm animal bingo cards to work on beside, above, below, close to, etc. while locating the animals on your card (e.g., the foal is above the duckling).
Plurals – count the number of animals you’ve found (2 pigs, 1 chicken, 3 sheep)
Pronouns – this is a nice game to work on “I” sentences. Talk about what you found “I found a sheep.” and what you are doing “I’m putting the cow in the barn.”
Irregular Past Tense Verbs – I like using Barnyard Bingo to work on the irregular past tense “found”. You can get lots of repetition if you talk about what you found each time you take an animal out. You can do the same with “got”.

Early Literacy Activities:

Look at the letters in “Barnyard Bingo” on the barn. Notice that “barnyard” and “bingo” both start with B.
Rhyming – sing Willoughby Wallaby using the animal names. Willoughby Wallaby weep, an elephant sat on a…..sheep! You can use the farm animal bingo calling cards as visuals for this.
Listen and find a sound like the sounds the animals start with. Sheep starts with shhhhh just like shoe. Sh—eep, Sh—oe! Cow starts with k-k-k. What else starts with k-k-k?
Play “guess my animal” – after taking an animal out of the barn, tell the other players the first sound of your animal and have them guess what you got. My animals starts with k-k-k. (cow) My animal starts with sh—-. (sheep)
Story-telling – create a story about the animals.