Daily paragraph bingo

When my kids were in upper elementary their writing skills were not where I wanted them to be. They needed to work on their editing and their ability to quickly write a paragraph, so I sat down and started creating some writing prompts. I then turned the prompts into daily paragraph bingos and it became a whole thing. It became an era of our Homeschool Writing lessons.

Here’s what happened with the daily paragraph bingo

Each month my kids had to complete 4 bingos, one for each week.

I would say, “You need to complete one bingo by the end of the week. I expect it to be turned in each day by 10:00, I will show where you need to correct it and then I expect the edits back before lunch and I will grade it.”

This is what we did for two, maybe three years.

Then I just had them complete a daily paragraph bingo each week and didn’t edit it daily.

Daily Bingo Writing Prompt Sets

Currently, I have one set published, but eventually, I’ll have multiple daily paragraph bingo sets you can get, including themed bingos.

• Daily Bingo Writing Prompt Set 1

Why did I have them do Daily Paragraph Bingo?

This all started because they were lazy in their writing. They would turn in these absolutely terrible first drafts and somehow certain aspects of spelling or grammar weren’t ingrained in them to just be correct.

I also knew in college they would be getting writing prompts with no preparation and be expected to write a paper or short story about that prompt.

I believe in preparing significantly in advance, so we started them in 4th or 5th grade with these prompts as a simple low-stress way to write.

Also, I was tired of my son, who if left to his own devices would write yet another story of a desperate last stand where he is the only one who can save the town as he desperately fights and then valiantly dies saving the town.

Yes, this is the son who did join the army.

His brother would write thinly veiled versions of Fox Trot Comics storylines.

The bingo forced them to pick different types of stories.

I’ve made loads of these daily bingo writing paragraph prompts. I’ve made themed sets, and for each of my history units I have sets.

Of course on the history units, some of the bingo sets are not a full 5×5 bingo, instead, they are sometimes 4×4 or 3×3. It just depends on how many prompts I created.

But I figured I don’t want to rewrite this post each time I have a new set coming out.

Here’s what happened, these have sat here almost finished for years, like since my kids were in middle school and that was more years ago than I want to admit.

Sigh, like almost 10 years ago.

Then I had a homeschool friend who needed a writing prompt, so I sent her the 3/4 done project. This one didn’t have the rubric or the individual pictures.

Fast forward about three month and another friend wanted writing help for her kid and I said, “I’ve got a daily paragraph bingo, it’s not quite done, but here you go.”

She said, “Ticia these are amazing! Why aren’t they published yet?” At which point I realized I really should get this done, so I spent two hours editing, taking pictures, adding in the rubric, and getting it published.