Nonsense word bingo opens on 6 cards of 4 × 4, each drawing 16 of 60 made-up words spread over the five short vowels. No child has seen vab or zem before, so every square has to be sounded out.
Read the full guide
Say it, then find it
Each call shows the word over a real word it rhymes with: zem rhymes with them. Say the made-up word twice. Pupils look for the spelling that matches the sounds, and to check a win the pupil reads each covered word back to you.
One vowel apart
Vab, veb, vib, vob and vub are all in the list, and so are zam, zem, zom and zum. When two of them land on one card, the first and last letters are no help: the child has to hear the vowel and read it.
With one child, skip the caller. Point to a square, have them read it aloud, and cover the ones they read right.
Questions and answers
What is nonsense word bingo?
Bingo played with made-up words that follow English spelling and mean nothing. You say fom, and pupils cover the square that spells it. Nobody knows these words by sight, so the game practices matching letters to sounds.
What are examples of nonsense words?
Vab, tep, kig, jom and zud are five from this set: a consonant, a short vowel, a consonant. None of the 60 is in the public ENABLE word list or the American Heritage Dictionary, and none sounds like a common word.
What grade is nonsense word bingo for?
Kindergarten and first grade, once children know the letter sounds. Common Core names consonant-vowel-consonant words in kindergarten (RF.K.2d) and decoding regularly spelled one-syllable words in grade 1 (RF.1.3b); every word here fits both.