Book Cover Bingo

January 6th is national bean day. Did you know that? Me neither, but one of our TAG members sure did! (You can always count on teenagers to know the most random things).

So needless to say, when this tidbit of information was shared, TAG unanimously decided our January program must have something to do with beans. Over the course of several more meetings, this program evolved (thankfully) from Bean Dip Buffet to Book Cover Bingo (originally beango...get it?).


For this program, the teens were really interested in the Bingo sheets and how we would play. We decided it would be easiest to have 24 book covers that repeated over all the boards. Choosing their top 24 books did take quite a while though!

I used a Bingo template from online and just added the book covers. On covers with small text (such as the original Perks of Being a Wallflower book) I instead used movie covers or whatever I could find with large text.

Add bingo balls in the form of folded paper and a control sheet and that's it...except for the prizes. And this was  the only real expense for this program. 

Random items were collected from the Dollar Tree, books in good condition were bought at the thrift store and a few fandom items came from Amazon. Even the items from Amazon such as the Dr. Who decal, elven brooch, HP necklaces or the Hunger Games Mockingjay bracelet, I was able to find them very cheaply (like less than $3 for each).  Unsurprisingly though, the books were the biggest hit!

Each kid got to choose X amount of prizes and once they reached that limit they could choose to keep playing. If they called a Bingo after reaching their maximum limit of items, they could swap with other players if they wanted to or keep what they had. Like our Dirty Santa Book Swap though, after the game was over they really just passed around and traded whatever they wanted. 

The only negative of this event is that it doesn't allow for very much in-game socializing. 

It is something I would willingly repeat! Maybe this coming summer... 

 
...Get Into the Game....


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