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.
Even though Dog Man won our last Book Tournament voting contest, and it is, without question, the most popular book series in our library, I underestimated its popularity going into virtual Dog Man Trivia. I expected a small crowd (Pokemon Trivia in June had around 55 attendees; surely Dog Man would be less). Nope. 101 people. 345+ comments. Even with technology issues during the livestream, people attended, participated, and were engaged with the questions and each other.
My questions were shared via screensharing a PowerPoint on Facebook Live (details below under Logistics). Twenty questions, followed by going back through the twenty questions faster to review the answers.
Watch the video here:
View and Download the PowerPoint below. The fonts I used (that didn’t seem to copy over) were Century Gothic, ObelixPro, and Grobold:
Like many of our school age programs, trivia was hosted on Facebook Live, though this could easily be translated to whatever platform your library is using for virtual events.
There are many great tools out there for trivia. Kahoot is a particularly popular tool that I’ve seen used frequently. That tool asks participants to play along on their phone or another device while watching the livestream, and the system times the questions and ranks participants. While I like that concept for an adult or maybe teen trivia, when there are no prizes involved, I don’t like that system for kids. Plus, it involves a second piece of technology, and for families playing along, it may be especially difficult to have each kid play individually.
My questions were added to a PowerPoint, shared to Facebook using their livestreaming screenshare technology.
How To Run a Trivia Program Using Facebook Live:
Make your slides “widescreen” so they fill up the viewers full computer, phone, or TV screen. Do this by going to Design – Slide Size in Microsoft PowerPoint.
I don’t like the clunkiness of viewers seeing me open my powerpoint after going live. To always just have the powerpoint as the center of your screen:
In PowerPoint, start the “Slide Show” mode, making your PowerPoint full screen.
Use the Windows key (not ESC) to exit the Slide Show presentation view. This key leaves it open in the background.
Start your Facebook Livestream. Instead of sharing your entire screen, just share one application — the Slide Show view of PowerPoint.
Return to the Slide Show view to change slides for your participants. Always use the Windows key to exit. If you use the ESC key, you won’t be able to restart the slideshow without creating a new livestream.
Using the steps above, you cannot easily see the comments during the presentation. I have my phone nearby with the livestream running, allowing me to see questions and comments as they come in. A coworker posts links and types responses to the comments, and I respond verbally as I can.
My program was supposed to last 30 minutes (I knew I was closer to 35 on practice). Between a solid 10+ minutes of technical issues in the middle, and participants asking me to slow down, the program went closer to 50 minutes, but participants stayed with me.
Dog Man passion is huge here, and I’m going to host a Dog Man BINGO in August to continue that online camaraderie around this fandom. What virtual programs have worked well for you? Let us know in the comments!
This summer, we celebrated our library’s most popular book character – Dog Man! Reflecting the passion for this book series and our busy summers, 110 patrons ages 6-10 (and their parents and younger siblings) attended this 1.5 hour event.
Over the last year, all of my unregistered fan-event programs have followed a similar template: two group activities at specific times and a variety of stations that attendees can visit at their leisure. This program was no different.
Trivia allowed those kids who have read every book ten times a chance to show off their knowledge. About fifteen minutes into the program, trivia began. Kids wrote down their guesses for all 20 questions before self-grading their trivia sheets on the honor system. Everyone who participated got a bookmark, and the top three participants got to pick, in order of highest to lowest scores, from our trivia prizes.
All questions and answers are available in the PowerPoint below (in addition to my opening program slides). Download the full slideshow here and the trivia answer sheets here.
Dog Man BINGO
While trivia is for the experts, BINGO is for everyone. We play BINGO until everyone has earned a BINGO, with a few rounds so that new folks have a chance to jump in. Winners reached into a brown lunch bag to pull out a random themed 1″ button.
To help kids who do not know every book and character, all images had a number beside them. I called out the number in addition to the name of the image when I pulled each picture out of the jar. All images were on all boards.
Download all 51 BINGO boards here, and the BINGO jar pieces here.
Stations
Police Academy Obstacle Course
Attendees trained like Dog Man and his police officer friends, making sure they have the physical agility to be prepared to save the day when needed. Today’s obstacle course included:
Pool noodles strung and hung from the ceiling (not pictured)
After completing the obstacle course, attendees received a Dog Man hat.
Petey’s Invention Lab: Robot Craft
You can’t have a Dog man program without some reference to the sometimes nefarious, sometimes good, Petey the Cat. Attendees built a simple robot craft from a cardboard tube and a variety of everyday craft supplies, including construction paper, pony beads, pipe cleaners, pom poms, googly eyes, and more. Tubes were spray-painted silver before the program.
Make Your Own Comic
Dog Man books are comics (made by the George and Harold of Captain Underpants fame), so kids got a chance to make their own comic strips. The blank comic sheets I used are available as free downloads from the picklebums website.
3Doodlers
Dog Man 3Doodler Station
We bought 3Doodler Start pens as part of a technology grant a few years ago, and I use these magic pens whenever I can. They are very simple to use–turn the pen on, wait for the green light, then push the big orange button to make plastic come out of the tip. The plastic is warm, but never so hot that it risks burning anyone. Patrons leave programs with a physical, 3D-version of whatever they drew.
I provided Dog Man outlines for patrons to use, but I don’t think too many folks had much success with those. Mostly kids made what they wanted.
Button Making
Similar to the 3Doodler pens, our department 2.25″ button maker gets a lot of use, especially at public programs. Attendees selected a 2.25″ button image, cut it into a circle, and brought it and the needed button pieces to a teen volunteer who helped them make the button.
Attendees had one last activity to complete–a simple game of Pin the Head on Dog Man (because pinning hats or badges would be too simple). My awesome marketing department printed a large body and three heads on our banner printer.
