Zingo! Word Builder Game by ThinkFun Review

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

My husband’s family tries to have a family reunion every year. It doesn’t always happen because of logistics and the economy but they try. When they do get together one of the nights is Bingo night. They often use this night as one of the fundraisers for future family reunions. These reunions aren’t just barbequing together at the park. It’s a 4 day themed event with a planned itinerary. So needless to say it requires funding especially when there’s 100+ people attending.

People are asked to purchase Bingo cards for a few bucks. It’s a fun night! Everyone enjoys it even the kids. Playing Zingo today made me think of our family reunions especially since we aren’t having one this year.

Zingo is a variant of the classic game Bingo that involves building three letter words. It is especially good for children just learning to spell sight words and who can read small words like cat, pet, dog, and the like.

To play Zingo mix up the letter tiles and place them equally into the Zinger. The Zinger is the contraption that dispenses the tiles during the game. Before  play beings have everyone choose a card.

The playing card has two sides. The yellow side is the beginner level having two letters already given whereas the orange side is for advanced playing because a lot of the time only one letter is given. It’s great that all players do not have to play on the same side so you can have a variety of ages playing.

To start the game figure out who will run the Zinger slider. I choose to do it since I was the only adult playing and didn’t want my kids bickering over it. To reveal two tiles it’s as simple as sliding the Zinger forward then back.

The first player to call out a valid 3 letter word using one of the tiles gets to place that tile on his or her card to form a word. The same thing can be done with the remaining tile. We played where one person can use both tiles in a word if they so wish.

Any tiles that can’t be claimed get placed back in the Zinger. On the front of the Zinger are two slits to push the tiles back in. They can’t just go straight in, they go in at a slight angle.

The first player to fill all the empty spaces on their card calls out Zingo and wins the game. It’s a great learning game for kids. This will be perfect for when my youngest starts kindergarten next year and is introduced to sight words.

I love that Zingo helps with letter and word recognition. If a child doesn’t know how to spell a word this game helps them out because when you spell a word on your card they get to see it visually. I played this game with an 8 year old and a 4 year old. My youngest didn’t really have a clue what was going on but my 8 year old did. He tried telling me the game was hard but it’s not. I just think he had trouble thinking of words even though he knows how to spell them all.

I highly recommend Zingo for early readers. It’s a fun game that teaches. A parent couldn’t want anything more!

What’s your favorite board or card game?

Disclosure: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.