11 Jun 2018
This week at Young At Heart ULO we had a slight change of pace and revisited an activity that we haven’t indulged in for quite a long time – BINGO!
The idea came about during preparations for our Carers Week event (taking place on Thursday 14th June), a social occasion that will also include a few games of prize bingo. As we don’t have a proper bingo calling device, we used the Young At heart ULO sessions to trial a range of free bingo calling apps available on the iPad. Unfortunately, all of them had at least one small issue – namely that they randomly played advertisements which audio that was significantly louder than the volume when calling numbers, which startled (and deafened) most of the group members, myself included!
As we had run out of raffle tickets by the time we got to the Thornaby group on Tuesday, we trialled a game of ‘stand up, sit down’ bingo where the last person standing won the prize. The idea behind the game is that everyone is given a single bingo slip (just 1 of the 6 cards) and stand up from their seat. As soon as a number is called that is on their bingo slip they must sit down but can continue the game using their bingo dabber. Having never played the game before, I found it to be just as confusing as the group members did and used the manual number calling button on the app to allow the volunteers time to help and advise those who were struggling with the game.
Next week we will be taking part in a seated exercise programme to improve physical fitness and wellbeing.
