Day of the Dead bingo cards, in English or Spanish

How to run Day of the Dead bingo

The page opens with the English list on 5x5 cards with a free space in the middle, 30 cards, 2 to a page: a class set on 15 sheets of Letter or A4. Use Start from above the word box to load the Spanish list instead. Every card is different, and every card says Card 7 of 30 · set 4821 (with your own numbers), so a winning card can be checked against the caller sheet. In 2,000 simulated games with the 53-entry English list, the first full row, column or diagonal came after a median of 15 calls with 30 players and 19 calls with 8; a full card takes about 48 calls, close to the whole list, so play lines for the first rounds and the full card only once.

The two lists are not translations of each other. Both are about the same evening: the ofrenda with its marigolds, candles and photos, the food left out for the people being remembered (pan de muerto, tamales, a glass of water, a pinch of salt), and the family around it. The English list leans on things that happen (A family story told, Laughing at an old memory, Dusting the photo frames); the Spanish list is single nouns with their article, so a beginner can read every square.

In a Spanish class

Call the English, mark the Spanish. In a Spanish class this is the easier round to start with, because students read the Spanish rather than hear it. Generate the cards from Día de Muertos (español). The caller sheet comes out in Spanish, so the teacher reads each line and says it in English: for la vela say “the candle”, for el cempasúchil say “the marigold”, for la caña de azúcar say “sugar cane”. Students find the Spanish on their card. Give five to ten seconds per call; this round practises reading and meaning.

Or the reverse: call the Spanish, mark the English. Generate the cards from the English list and call the Spanish for each square, so the round trains listening. A few English entries are loan words that stay the same (Ofrenda, Papel picado, Pan de muerto, Tamales, Mole), which gives weaker students some easy first marks. To win, a student reads their line back in Spanish, article included, and you check it against your sheet.

Every Spanish noun carries el, la, los or las, so the gender is learned with the word. The accents print: the PDF font has á, é, í, ó, ú and ñ, and every entry in both lists was checked to print exactly as written, including el álbum de fotos and la visita al panteón. If your class is just starting out, the Spanish vocabulary bingo page has beginner lists (animals, colours and numbers, food, the classroom) with the English printed on the caller sheet for you.

At home or at a family evening

Before you print, add your own family to the list: the name of a grandmother, the dish an uncle always made, the song a cousin loved. Type each one on its own line in the box (a comma splits a line into two squares). When one of those squares is called, stop for a moment and let whoever knew that person say one thing about them. The game is then a way of telling the stories, and nobody minds that it gets slower. Keep prizes small and kind: the first piece of pan de muerto, choosing the next song, lighting the next candle.

Pictures for children who cannot read yet

Choose Pictures for pre-readers at the top of the form. The box fills with 35 drawings (a marigold, a candle, a smiling sugar skull, pan de muerto, papel picado, a family photo, a butterfly, a guitar, hot chocolate, corn, a dog and more), the cards switch to 3x3, and each square is a black line drawing with its English word underneath; untick Show the word under each picture for pictures only. The drawings print black on white, so a finished card becomes a colouring sheet. Download PDF puts the drawings in the file too, and the on-screen caller has a Day of the Dead picture-set button that shows each call large on a classroom screen.

Remembering, not Halloween

Neither list has ghosts, costumes, graves or anything meant to scare, and the sugar skull in the pictures is smiling. Traditions differ from region to region and from one family to the next, so read the lists before you print and take out anything your family or your students' families do not do. If someone in the room has lost a person recently, ask before you play.

Printing

Two per page keeps longer squares such as A favourite food left out readable on a 5x5 card. Press Print cards, set margins to Default and scale to 100%, or Download PDF to print from a phone or at a print shop. Everything is made in your browser: nothing you type is uploaded, and there is no sign-up or watermark. Print the cards by the end of October so they are ready for 1 November.