How baby shower bingo saved my life 
… I’ve had the fortune/misfortune to host 11 different baby showers in the past three years thanks to co-workers, friends, and family members getting pregnant (when you’re at the age, everyone is doing it). One thing I’ve learned is that games are absolutely essential to keeping the party moving forward and making sure everyone is having a good time. I know of almost no other time when people will be coming together for such an intimate party, yet having so many people possibly not knowing each other. My last baby shower I held had mother-in-laws trying to talk with 18-year-old office friends of the mommy-to-be, talking with cousins from across the state. It was awkward. That is, until…
Until I got the games out, everyone was just standing around making really bad small talk. But then I opened up a few bottles of wine (none for the mommy-to-be) and started a game of Baby Shower Bingo. Everyone knows how to play so we went straight into the game. And after the ladies saw that they could win some nice prizes (top prize was a $30 gift certificate to Victoria’s Secret, but we had lots of $5 gcs to Starbucks).
The wine helped a lot too, and a few of the ladies started getting pretty animated and at one point, someone fell out of her chair trying to be the first person to yell BABY SHOWER BINGO! We all had a great laugh.
I’ve found the best way to do baby shower bingo is to just buy the pre-made cards online. There are lots of places to get free ones, but they looked terrible when I downloaded them, and I just didn’t have time to make my own for the last party. I’d made my own in the past, but after just buying some, it was so easy that I’ll never go back.
I hope this helps a few of you out there, games are the key and can be lots of fun with the help of a little wine and some fun prizes.
By: Marisa Meidle
I recently wrote an article discussing the importance of teachers using get to know you activities to reduce classroom management problems and improve academic achievement. In that article I shared one of my favorite get to know you activities that I call the “Interview and Introduction”. In this activity students answer a series of questions about themselves on an index card, the teacher then redistributes those cards and then has the students walk around the room “interviewing” each other until they find the person whose card they have. Students then “introduce” each other.
One of the great things about this activity is that the teacher gets to collect the cards and use the information on those cards for follow-up get to know you activities.
In this article I’d like to share with you one of those follow-up get to know you activities. I call it…Get To Know You Bingo.
It’s simple and fun…
First, I take the index cards I collected from the “Interview and Introduction” activity and use the information on them to create bingo cards. I simply go through each index card a place one thing about each student in each bingo square. Each student then gets their own bingo sheet and walks around the room trying to find which of their classmates matches up with which bingo square. When students find a match they get their classmate to sign that particular box. Five signatures in a row wins Bingo!
Of course, it is much easier to create bingo cards if you have some type of bingo card creator software. However, even if you do not own any software to create bingo cards, the time it takes is well worth it! Students are up and moving about the classroom and having lots of fun, but more importantly, students form and build upon their relationships with one another and this will have a huge impact on both classroom management and academic achievement throughout the school year.
By: Adam Waxler
