That's Cheating!

 I often play Bingo with my students, using words that they have been learning or letters to identify or say the sounds the letters make when they find the letters on their boards. Today I was playing Bingo with an almost-4-yr-old boy, with the spaces on the boards depicting letters of the alphabet and a word that started with the letter shown on each individual space, the boy having to say what sound the letter made. He was pretty good at it. He knew almost every sound the letters made. In order to play, I had him pulling plastic letters out of an old tissue box that I turned into a cat face, making it into our "alphabet box."

We placed little wooden blocks on our spaces when we found the letter on our boards that he pulled out of the box. We'd been playing for about ten minutes and he was close to getting a Bingo. All he needed was an S. So instead of reaching into the opening of the box without looking to find out what letter he got, he was looking into the box and pushing the letters around, and I could tell he was looking for an S. I knew he just wanted to end the game, but I told him that that was cheating, and he had to pick a letter without looking. 

Many of the kids that I tutor like playing Bingo, even the other 3-yr-old. But I could tell that his attention span was running out. So I don't think I'll have him play Bingo again, at least not for a long while.