Turn a normal library trip into a treasure hunt adventure your kids will love using this free printable library scavenger hunt BINGO game. It’s official. Summer is here. The last bell has rung, and we are FREE until August. I have big plans for the summer…hopefully not too big. I’m trying to balance the desire to make it a summer of fun adventures with the reality that normal life STUFF has to happen, too.
In my last post, I shared a free printable library scavenger hunt game to make summer trips to the library more fun. If you haven’t tried it yet, jump over to that post, print out the scavenger hunt cards, and head to the library today!
My boys have been digging this game during our last few trips to the library, and I’m happy to report that they have been much more actively involved in picking books because of it. Our favorite challenge card to date?
Find the BIGGEST book you can! This week we found these two behemoth books that are full of gorgeous illustrations and tons of facts about animals. At first, we were going to look at them both in the library and pick which one we liked best to bring home, but my four-year-old couldn’t decide.
So I got to be the wonderfully indulgent mom who said, “Should we just bring both home?”
“Can we?!” he asked hopefully with wide eyes.
How great is it that I got mom points for allowing him to bring MORE learning and literacy into our home? WIN!
And, since I can’t be stopped once I discover a good thing, I decided to add to our library challenge game…by turning it into BINGO!
We love BINGO games at our house. We have a summer bucket list BINGO as well as a Random Acts of Kindness BINGO that my boys have loved doing in the past. BINGO games have been a great motivation for my kids and an easy way to keep track of what we’re accomplishing. It seemed a perfect fit for this library scavenger hunt challenge!
How to play library scavenger hunt BINGO
You can use this printable library BINGO game in several ways:
- Use it in conjunction with the library scavenger hunt bookmark cards. As your kids draw cards and complete challenges, mark them off on the BINGO sheet (use stickers or color in the box to show the challenges you’ve done). You can keep this sheet in your library bag so you have it for every trip. Over the course of the summer, see if you can get BINGO (or even blackout!).
- Use it as a stand alone activity. Especially if you have older kids who need more of a challenge, see if they can get BINGO all in one trip to the library. Keep the board for your next library trip, though, and challenge them to get BINGO going in a different direction.
Note: There are 36 challenge cards in my previous post, but only 25 BINGO squares, so some of the challenges didn’t make it onto the BINGO version. You may want to pull out the not-included cards if you think your children will mutiny if they don’t get to put a sticker on a box (I have one child that certainly WOULD launch a coup).
That’s it! I’d love to see pictures of the books your find this summer. Use the hashtag #summerlibraryscavengerhunt and tag me @meg_themanylittlejoys on Instagram.
Let’s make it a great summer of reading!
Hello! I just started as a new librarian at a school and saw this idea of yours on Pinterest. This is absolutely GENIUS! Thank you so much for putting this idea out there (and for free!). You made my day!
I’m so glad you like it! Enjoy!
thank you so much, just did this with a school group that came into my public library it worked with the group so well, they were in Kindergarten to yr 4. they had so much fun!!!
That’s so good to hear! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
I do submission work on games in libraries and your ideas really helped me thank you