E turned 4 last week, and though I love celebrating his birthday, I slightly dread the gift-receiving part. While it’s totally up to the gift-giver to decide what they think the birthday kid will want, there are times where the gifts are loud, big, encourages inappropriate behavior, or something similarly obnoxious. However, all of his gifts this year were really great.
There was one gift in particular that we received that I wanted to share about it because I had never heard about it before and we’ve been playing with it every day since he got it: Zingo. And apparently I’m living under some sort of rock because we got two awesome versions of the game. Zingo is a version of bingo that is simple to set up and play.
The game comes with Zingo cards (like bingo cards), and a nifty “zinger” that you slide back and forth to reveal the tiles that you’ll fill your card with. E got a version with matching pictures and one for numbers. Zingo! 1-2-3 also has a variation for addition so this will be a game that grows with him.
We’ve been focusing on cooperative games so far, and Zingo is one of our first with a “winner.” It’s been a good experience to talk about how fun it is to “win,” but also how to handle when you’re not the first to finish. We’ve been able to talk about playing fair and by the rules, and being excited for the person who finishes first. Though we’re not playing 100% by the rules yet, the set-up allows for you to adjust the play to the age of your child. It’s also a game that doesn’t take too long to play from start-to-finish which is great for kids and parents.
I’d highly recommend Zingo for your own game collection or if you need to attend a birthday for a pre-schooler/kindergartner. The game doesn’t give an upper age limit but has a number of other variations that would work well for older kids such as site words, time-telling, and even a Spanish version! There’s also a “Zingo! To Go” which we might need to get before our next road trip!