Five Card Bingo

Need a quick game or an alternative to Bingo? One of my patients told me about this game- Five Card Bingo! This is an easy game to play with individuals who cannot process an entire Bingo card. Even large, over-sized Bingo cards can sometimes be too much to look at.


Let me preface the instructions by saying I am fully aware that changing or even suggesting a change to Bingo can possibly result in the poor offending Activity Director being hung from the rafters. You know if your folks can take it so I'm putting that burden on you. I hereby absolve myself of any and all injuries that may or may not occur as a result of changing Bingo. Of course, if your residents like Five Card Bingo, I'm hijackin' your thunder!  (Y'all know I'm teasing).

Here's how the game works:

You need two decks of cards, preferably one of them supporting the West Virginia Mountaineers. I'm just saying...

You won't need the Jokers for this so pull those guys out.

Before you begin, you might want to review the suits: Heart, Club, Spade, Diamond

Click here for a quick download of the suit images. The images are each letter-size and ready to go. They will help out as a visual aide if you feel that would be helpful for your group and the download saves you from copying/scanning, enlarging, blah blah blah-- ready to go! (Sometimes the publisher has preview images, sometimes not. You'll need to click on "Next"  then "Download This File" in order to get each of the four images.)

So let's play this easy game.

Save one deck of cards for the dealer. For the players, deal five cards to each player from the second deck. Line them up, face up.

The dealer turns over one card at a time from his or her deck and calls out that card.

If a player has that card, the card is turned face down.

The first player to turn all five cards face down is the winner. Y'all can yell BINGO or whatever you feel is appropriate.

Of course you can increase the number of cards the players receive depending upon your group's overall functional level...

... but seems that playing too many cards can become difficult because of all the visual input. You know your folks, you can decide how many cards to play.

So there you go- one quick pick-up game to try out with your residents.

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See ya next time.