Superhero BINGO! One of my coworkers and I planned a series of after school livestream programs on Facebook Live in September. The first, Disney Trivia, received a decent audience, but after that program, attendance trickled down to just a handful of players.
Superhero BINGO was the last program in that series, and, unfortunately, I was sick on the day of the program. My coworker, Alexx, graciously presented it for me. Make sure to check out Alexx’s full superhero fun in the event video below.
Alexx played three rounds of BINGO, two where we aimed for five in a row and a final coverall game.
Watch Alexx’s amazing performance (costume and all!) here.
All of the BINGO cards have the same 24 characters on them (plus the free space). I include a number beside each character image to help kids and grown-ups quickly find characters they are unfamiliar with.
Dog Man BINGO! There is so much Dog Man love in the universe. This program was pulled from my Dog Man to the Rescue! in-person 2019 Dog Man event, with some minor tweaks to work as a virtual event.
This had a bit more interest than Book Character BINGO a few weeks ago, though I don’t think BINGO draws excitement the same way trivia does. We are experimenting with a weekly live after school trivia/BINGO style event in September, and I’ll be interested to see how that works out.
We played three rounds of BINGO, two where we aimed for five in a row, and a final coverall game, allowing everyone to get a BINGO.
Watch the video here:
All of the BINGO cards have the same 24 characters on them (plus the free space). I include a number beside each character image to help kids and grown-ups quickly find characters or book covers they are unfamiliar with.
Book Character BINGO! This was my first virtual event with very low attendance. I had two families play during the event, with about five more play later in the day. I think our virtual programming’s popularity is directly connected to how popular the related franchise is. Pokemon = popular. Dog Man = popular. Generic Book Characters, even with some popular ones thrown in = not so much.
Book Character BINGO Setup
This program took place on a day I was required to work in our library, so my setup is a bit different. To have a mask off, I have to be in a closed room, and my only real option was the library board room. One wall is a giant window, another is glass facing admin, and the other two are covered in framed awards and maps. I set up in front of the mini dry erase board:
This isn’t the most convenient setup, but it allowed me to have all of my technology connected and have a cute background.
I was planning to livestream from my laptop, but after all the technical issues I had during Dog Man Trivia last week, I decided to use my phone for my cellphone’s internet. Our work wifi is spotty, especially in our filming space, and the publicly circulating hotspots don’t actually work in the library (bad network coverage).
This involved a lot of technology, including:
Phone on tripod with phone mount for livestreaming
Laptop for watching stream and responding to comments (off camera)
Speaker and iPod touch for background music (off camera)
Book Character BINGO Content
We played three rounds of BINGO, two where we aimed for five in a row, and a final coverall game.
Watch the video here:
All of the BINGO cards have the same 24 characters on them (plus the free space). I include a number beside each character image to help kids and grown-ups quickly find characters they are unfamiliar with. I also used this as an opportunity to book talk some of the characters on the BINGO cards.
Last week was an extra layer of busy for me. Each summer for the last three years we have had a Pokémon event. Typically, our Pokemon Party lasts about two hours, has about 200 attendees, and includes trivia, BINGO, crafts, tech, snacks, card trading, and more. The 2020 Pokémon Party was on the calendar…and then COVID happened. Even though this event typically relies heavily on in-library activities and the shared love of a few hundred Pokémon fans in one space, I knew this was one of my must-make-virtual activities.
Pokémon Party turned into virtual Pokémon Week, mostly hosted through Facebook Live. This platform creates some limitations, but it has been our go-to location for most of our virtual programming (and we do still see a lot of familiar faces on there). I created off-Facebook versions of these programs to allow for non-social-media users to also join in on the fun.
Attendance was strong at these events, with 60 active participants in both Trivia and Guess that Pokémon, and about 40 active participants at BINGO.
In addition to all of the shared content below, I also had these three links available for each event:
Very similar to our in-person trivia (except no prizes and easier), our virtual Pokemon Trivia included 20 questions. This was created in PowerPoint and presented using Facebook Live’s screen share tool. Due to the setup, my computer screen was the PowerPoint file, so I had a coworker typing answers to comments, and I verbally responded to some comments after seeing them through the livestream on my phone. Audio and video quality are a big deal as we move farther down the path of virtual programming, and I will never doubt the value of my lovely Yeti microphone (I actually like my voice when I listen back to a recording. I didn’t think that was possible.).
VideoofFacebook Live Event:
Same Event on YouTube: The same trivia content can be found in the YouTube video, though this was created for this platform so the extra content is a little different:
Certificate: At the end of the trivia event, we provided a link in the comments to a printable Trivia Master certificate:
During our in-person event, this is a passive station with images on the wall that attendee’s identify, self-score, and then pick-up a small prize (like a button or bookmark). I made this another trivia-style event.
To Make Your Own CharacterShadows: I used Microsoft PowerPoint, though this should work in any Microsoft tool (and most image editing software):
I found most of my Pokemon images here, though any image without a background can be edited this way.
In PowerPoint:
I pasted the image.
Right clicked on the image and selected “Format Picture.”
In the new options to the right, I selected the fourth image in the new toolbar, “Picture.”
Changed the “brightness” to zero. The image is now solid black.
Day Three: Pokemon BINGO
Pokemon BINGO was a different virtual adjustment–attendees were able to see me this time! There was an extra “step” here–attendees needed to download Pokemon BINGO cards ahead of time and either print them out or play virtually (like in a paint style program).
Video of Facevook Event:
Downloadable BINGO Cards: 100 unique downloadable Pokemon BINGO cards, plus instructions to play at home.
We wrapped up our Pokemon week with our first virtual presenter for the summer, cartoonist Steve Harpster. He taught kids how to draw cartoon-style versions of a variety of Pokemon!
