There’s no question that kids who play sports learn a ton of incredibly important things, from physical fitness to being part of a team to resilience and much more. But that’s not all kids can learn from sports! There are tons of learning opportunities for spectators too. These printable activities from The Trip Clip are for kids who love football so much they want to talk about football and watch football in addition to playing it.
Parents who have football-loving kids can use these activities when watching football at home, when going to a game, and at siblings’ sporting events. Teachers can use them as free time activities in the classroom, or assign them as extra credit packets. Kids won’t even know they’re learning with these engaging sports themed activities.
You can print a packet with all 6 activities on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Football Bingo
Football bingo is a fun addition to watching a football game on TV or in person, and it can even keep siblings entertained during practices. The combination of pictures and words promotes simple reading skills. The Trip Clip’s bingo activity lets you generate an unlimited number of football bingo boards at random, or edit the football boards so you can create boards very specific to your child’s interests. You can change the pictures and write your own text – for a true football lover, use the BINGO board to help them watch for touchdowns, sacks, fouls, field goals, and anything else you can think of related to the game that they will want to spot.
You can print out multiple copies of a single board and work together to try to complete the whole thing, or make different boards for each member of the family so you can compete to see who can get a bingo first. Click here to see more ideas for using these bingo boards.
Football Counting Game
Football Count On It is a wonderful way to teach some simple math graphing skills, and it’s surprisingly engaging! You can pick from 100s of images to put on your list. Then watch for those things while watching a football game, and each time you see one, fill in one of the boxes. Just like with Bingo, if you have a football lover in your family, use The Trip Clip website to edit this chart so your kids can track touchdowns, sacks, field goals, fouls, etc. You can even make entries for each team so this will turn into a simple score charting tool. The result will be a bar graph that they can use to easily see which items were most common.
For some added learning, have your kids make predictions ahead of time about what they will see the most and the least often. Then have them collect their data and circle back afterward the game to see if the data supports their predictions. It’s a great and super simple introduction to the scientific method!
Football Word Search
Word searches allow kids to engage with letters, words, and spelling in a way that will let them have fun and not realize they’re learning. Whether they’re getting more comfortable with seeing letter combinations and solidifying the spelling of some common words, or engaging in an activity that will help hone their problem solving skills, games and puzzles are an excellent way to help kids have fun while they’re learning.
The Trip Clip lets you create an unlimited number of word search puzzles, and you can make easy 5×5 puzzles for little kids, or much harder 20×20 puzzles for older kids. You can also enter your own words. That lets you add words you want your kids to learn, or ones that will make it more fun. I made a custom word search puzzle for a team party that included the names of each member of the team and the coach!
Football Coloring Pictures
Coloring might seem like something that is just for fun, but in reality it helps with dexterity and hand-eye coordination that’s needed for handwriting. It also lets kids be creative and explore colors, textures, styles, and much more. Never underestimate the value of art in a child’s education! Using The Trip Clip, you can make a whole coloring book that contains just football images, or sports images.
Football Secret Messages
Secret Message Puzzles (or cryptogram puzzles) teach about letter and word combinations useful for reading and spelling, and are also an introduction to computer programming and code breaking. The Trip Clip lets you set the difficulty level so you can start kids out as beginners while they learn how these puzzles work. Then you can ramp up the difficulty as they learn tricks like watching for common letters, and common small words like a, and, and the.
You can also use The Trip Clip website to create custom secret message puzzles. You can enter your own text for kids to unscramble, and make it about any topic they care about. I recommend looking up rare football facts and making puzzles for each fact. Then watch the kids solve the puzzles and learn new things about their favorite sport!
Football Alphabet Game
The Alphabet Game can be used absolutely anywhere for a little entertainment and learning wherever you go. When you’re watching a football game, you can make it all about football! The idea is for kids to find something on the field or in the stands (like I Spy) that begins with each letter in the list. This is great for recognizing first letter sounds for younger kids (they’ll need help with the writing), and it’s great spelling and writing practice for older kids.
The Trip Clip website will generate an unlimited number of Alphabet Game boards so you can print a new one for each game and see what your kids can find.
Kid-Sized Clipboard
All of these activities are designed to fit on a half sheet of paper to fit into a Trip Clip Clipboard. Along with the attached pen, the clipboard is a great way to use your printed activity pages while you’re at a football game.
My Niece Gaby
This football bundle was made by my niece Gaby, who has autism. You can go here to read more about her and how how she helps me with The Trip Clip. She has made other sports-themed bundles for me as well. Here are all of them!
The Trip Clip Blog 