Gratitude bingo
Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance. ―Eckhart Tolle
👥 Serves: 5-30 people
🎚 Difficulty: Easy
⏳ Total time: 30-90 minutes
🥣 Ingredients: Sheets of paper (1 per participant), pens (1 per participant), post-its (6 per participant), 1 bag for the drawings, small prizes for the winners
💪 Nutritional values: Gratitude, Storytelling, Celebration, Appreciation, Fun
Gratitude bingo
📝 Description
Cultivating gratitude whilst having fun!
The gratitude bingo is a simple and fun activity you can play at certain celebratory moments like New Year’s Eve or at the end of a team retreat. The goal is to foster appreciation by sharing stories of gratitudes to deepen your connection with others.
The following activity has been adapted by Michele Pierangeli, co-founder of Joydeed, an initiative that collects and shares stories of values such as gratitude, love, kindness, authenticity, and inspiration through its pass-it-forward cards. Our friends at Joydeed have learned this activity at the Museum of Happiness.
So, gather some friends and share your gratitude bingo’s pictures or stories using the #joydeed and #recipesforwellbeing hashtags.
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Important: We shared this recipe as part of our blog post “Wellbeing in the time of COVID-19” because it’s a simple but effective activity to cultivate gratitude. Naturally, take all needed precautions: for instance, avoid giving a group hug as a prize – there are many other creative ideas to reward the winners!
This recipe has also been featured in our blog post “Are you a glass half-full or glass half-empty person?” published on tbd* on 28 October 2020.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Prepping the material (3’)
First and foremost, distribute 6 post-its, one marker, and one sheet to all participants. Turn the sheet landscape-wise and divide it into 6 equal boxes by drawing two vertical lines and one horizontal.
Step 2 – Drawing and reflecting (10’)
Ask everyone to draw in each box something meaningful and memorable they are grateful for. This could be a particular experience, something they learned, an event that happened to them or something they achieved. Ask them to summarise the drawing with some keywords and place them into each box.
Step 3 – Creating the bingo tickets (3’)
At this point, ask everyone to write their keywords for each box on 6 separate post-its. Once they are done with the writing, ask participants to fold them in half. At this point, collect all post-its and place them inside the bag.
Step 4 – Let’s bingo! (35’)
Pick one ticket from the bag (one at a time) and read it out loud: whoever has that keyword or a similar one on their sheet will mark the respective box with a star. Whenever someone scores a star, they are invited to briefly share their story of gratitude.
Step 5 – Celebrating the winners (5’)
The first person to “star” all their boxes can shout out loud “Gratitude Bingo”. This person receives the small prize you have prepared for them, or if there are no prizes, a group hug is a great one! You can continue to play to discover more gratitude stories!