Activity details

  • 45 mins
  • Free
  • Indoors / At camp
  • Individuals
  • Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Explorers

Activity outcomes

Find it easier to meet new people, go to new places, and do new things.

Find it easier to understand challenges, consider your options, and find solutions.

Gain a range of practical and modern skills for school, work, and your social life.

You’ll need

  • Pens or pencils 
  • Copies of the map symbol bingo sheets 
  • Bag or bowl for tokens 
  • Bag or bowl for calling cards

Instructions

Map Symbol Bingo cards and sheets – PDF 1.3MB


Download

Before you begin

  • Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
  • Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers. 

Setting up this activity

  • Print out copies of the bingo cards and the calling cards before running this activity. You’ll need to cut them out.
  • Put all the calling cards in a bag, or fold them up and place them in a bowl.
  • If you want to play this game multiple times, you could laminate the cards and use tokens to cover any symbols that are called out, rather than using a pen to tick them off. You could also use whiteboard pens on laminated cards.
  • You may want to have prizes for a line, two lines or full house. 
  • Remind people it’s about taking part, cheering each other on and having fun, not about winning.

Play the game

  1. Tell everyone you’re going to play a game of bingo learn about map symbols. For younger groups, you could ask if anyone can describe any map symbols they already know or what we might find on a map. 
  2. Hand out the cards or pens to each person, however you may want to play in pairs or small groups. 
  3. A bowl or bag should have pieces of paper in, with each one having a map symbol on it that’ll match a symbol on some of the cards.
  4. Someone will pick out folded pieces of paper from a bag or bowl, then call out what it is. You could hold up each piece of paper as it’s called to help people recognise the symbols.
  5. When the symbols are called out, everyone should check their card. If the symbol is on their card then they can tick it off or place a token on it. 
  6. In bingo, you normally play for one line, two lines and full house.
  • To play for one line, if people tick off all the symbols in a row, or in a horizontal line, then they can shout ‘Bingo!’
  • To play for two lines, if people tick off all the symbols in two rows, or in two horizontal lines, then they can shout ‘Bingo!’
  • Finally, to play for a ‘full house’, if people tick off all the symbols on their card, they can shout ‘Bingo!’. 

Winning the game

  1. As each ‘Bingo!’ is called, someone should check the cards to make sure it’s been called correctly.
  2. You may want to give prizes for when ‘Bingo’ is called, but you could also reward teamwork or being a good player to others and cheering them on.
  3. At the end, you could ask people to swap cards and play again. To play again, if you’re using pens to tick off the symbols, people could tick them in a different way or direction for each game. They could also use different coloured pens. If you’re using tokens, these can just be removed.

Reflection

This activity was all about map symbols. Did anyone recognise any of the map symbols? Which of the symbols were easy to recognise? Which of them were trickier or harder to identify? Did any not look anything like what they were meant to be?

Map symbols can be really useful. Why do you think map symbols are important? How might they help us? Is there anywhere else these symbols might be used or where else might you have seen them? You often get symbols similar to map symbols on road signs.

Why do you think people use these map symbols on other things? They’re well known and people can easily recognise them. 

We played bingo to learn about the symbols. What was that like? Was it fun? Was it easy or hard? Did anyone get a line or full house? What was it like waiting for your symbols to be called? What was it like being patient?

Sometimes in bingo people may win before us at the last minute, because bingo is often random and we can’t control what happens next. Did you get really close, with only a couple left, but someone else’s symbol came up first, so they won? How did that feel? How did you manage those feelings? How can we apply this to other areas in our lives?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Scissors

  • Supervise young people appropriately when they’re using scissors. Store all sharp objects securely, out of the reach of young people.

Reproduced from the original post found on Scouts UK: https://www.scouts.org.uk/activities/play-map-symbol-bingo/