SC State Library, SC Festival of Discovery and State Capitals Bingo?

I realized after this past weekend's event and doing my workshop that I'm going to need more games to play for prizes in the workshops and at events where I'm not really doing my workshop; I had one girl in my workshop who remembered playing my game last year at the table and winning a prize, but thankfully she won a different prize this year.

Jess, my wonderful assistant, attended the SC State Library workshop during the time I was actually doing my "Writing Roads" workshop. She came back with a Day by Day calendar, which isn't dated but is themed by the month. Anyway, glancing through it, not only does it have daily activities that can be done as a family unit, but there are tidbits of events or activities going on around the state each month and recommended books to go along with the month's theme. I was scanning through the calendar and in July found the SC Festival of Discovery in Greenwood, which is only about 25 miles from where I reside. So I contacted them and after submitting my information (my sell sheet and a picture of my table setup) they decided that writing is a different form of art and that I could be a participant in the Arts & Crafts fair during the festival.

After sending off my registration form and check, I thought "hmm, I need some activity in my tent for the kids to do to win prizes that will be different than my "Road Trip" game and keep the prizes different too." So I texted Jess and asked that she brainstorm some ideas. I googled "free printable united states games" and this Super Teachers worksheets website came up with lots of state related pages. One of the first ones I pulled up was the State Capitals Bingo game - and decided to print it out. The first time I printed it out on regular paper and then thought it needed to be sturdier, so I printed again on card stock. Then I decided to color code the calling sheet and the bingo cards (yeah, I'm a geek, I use highlighters for work - usually just four colors but I do have the yellow that I haven't been using, so that gave me five colors, which worked out perfectly). This is the result of the calling card sheet and one set of bingo cards:


This is the call sheet, which I'll laminate and cut the pieces up so that we can put them in a box from which we will do the drawing.



This is a page with two finished cards. Again, these will be laminated (dry erase markers will be used to mark the spots) and cut apart but as you see, the colors go along with the call sheet - the bingo cards list the capitals and the call cards have the state and the capital under it.

I figured that we could call and show the color that would help the kids figure out the capital and if they have it on their card or not. The card on the left has 9 spots that are blue (hopefully not all the blue capitals will be called during a bingo game). The one on the right has 7 orange spots. Some game cards are pretty evenly distributed, but then again, no one was thinking color coordinating the call sheet with the bingo cards for prompting the kids.

I printed off another one which I may use in a larger workshop called "I have ..., Who has ..." - the cards have the capital of a state for the "I have" part and then you ask "Who has the capital of ??" and you say the state on your card. This may just be an occupier type activity - not for prizes.

Two other state capital things I'll probably use are the States and Capitals Quiz, laminate so that the kids can use the dry erase markers to fill in their answers to be checked and the numbered state/capitals worksheet - will probably do either state or the capital but they have to get so many correct in order to win a prize.

So what do you think of one of my new games? Any other ideas or resources out there to be used for small prizes to keep the kids entertained, state or patriotic related? Share your thoughts, please. Ma America :)