classroom · bingo · free printable
Free Printable Food Bingo Cards
Hold up the banana, and the word, the thing and the square on the card all meet at once.
Made by the PaperCarnival team · Updated
36 curated squares · unique cards every time · US Letter & A4
Holding up a real banana is the call that makes food bingo work in an ESL room: the word, the thing and the square on the card all meet at once. You can also say the word or describe it, and learners find and mark the match on their own board.
Food bingo can also be called by category, something you drink or something that grows on a tree, with learners marking any square that fits and saying why it belongs.
For a shopping lesson or a lesson on the foods of one country, paste your own words into the generator; an emoji beside each word gives the picture support a beginner needs.
The word list
Every square, ready to print, or edit the list in the generator
- Apple
- Banana
- Bread
- Cheese
- Egg
- Milk
- Rice
- Chicken
- Fish
- Carrot
- Potato
- Tomato
- Orange
- Grapes
- Water
- Juice
- Soup
- Salad
- Pizza
- Pasta
- Sandwich
- Cake
- Cookie
- Ice cream
- Butter
- Corn
- Beans
- Onion
- Lemon
- Strawberry
- Yogurt
- Honey
- Noodles
- Melon
- Peas
- Pear
Ways to play
Show it
Hold up the real food, or a picture of it, and learners find the word on their card.
Give a clue
Describe a food instead of naming it ("it's yellow and monkeys love it") and learners work out which square it is.
Blackout
Play until one card is completely marked, the longest round and the one that works through every food on the list.
Order it back
The winner reads their line back as if ordering at a counter, one food at a time, which is the sentence they will actually need.
Questions
How does food bingo help ESL learners?
Each call ties a word to something a learner can picture or hold, and the round repeats those words until they come without thinking. The clue and ordering variants above add listening and speaking.
Will beginners who cannot read the words yet manage?
Yes, if you put a native emoji beside each word in the generator, so the card shows the picture as well as the word.
What level of English does it suit?
It suits young learners and beginner ESL classes. Absolute beginners do better on a smaller grid built from the foods they eat most often.