Card Bingo

17/10/13

This evening was run by Snowy Owl and was an activity she had on the side for pack holiday, had we needed it. 

The girls were told to get into groups of 4 and sit around a table. I ended up playing, along with another Young Leader, because we didn't have a multiple of 4 girls! Each group was given a pack of playing cards which were dealt out to the 4 girls around the table (giving 13 cards for each girl) and they laid them all out, face up, in front of them, making sure they didn't get them confused with the other people on their table. We then had to do a quick lesson on what each suit looked like because most of the girls had absolutely no idea. Once we'd cleared that up we started the game. Snowy had a pack of giant cards which she shuffled. She then selected a card from the pack at random and called it out while holding it up. Whichever girl on each table had that card turned it over. It took a few turns for the girls to get the hang of it - one of them even asked us "does it have to match the picture and the umber or just one of them?"..! But once they'd all figured out how it worked, the game sped up. When a girl had one card left face up, she stood up and, once she could turn that card over, she shouted out BINGO!

The first game that we played went quite slowly although there was a lot of shouting as they got very excited when they were winning on their table! We then played again and, this time, Snowy went much quicker so the game took about half the time of the previous one. I think the one thing I would have changed about it would have been to have a winner on each table and not stop after one girl had won. It would have taken more time but the girls who were one or two cards away seemed quite put out that they had to stop when they were so close to beating the other girls on their table. 

I think they girls enjoyed this evening but I think it could have gone a bit smoother. I acknowledge the fact that Snowy is new to Guiding and has to learn from her mistakes but sometimes I can't quite understand why people do the things they do when I can clearly see it won't work so well (for example, I would have continued the game without a second thought to keep the girls engaged)... I guess it's just a by-product of having been brought up surrounded with Guiding that these things come so naturally to me.