How do you run music bingo for seniors?

Music bingo is the one game where a room of seniors sings along before anyone wins. The caller names a song, someone starts the chorus, and a table of people who were quiet a moment ago are humming together. Here is how to run it, with our three printable packs: sing-along songs, hymns and Christmas carols.

Three music bingo packs for seniors

The cards are 4 x 4 on purpose: with sixteen squares, even a long title such as “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” prints large. Each card fills its own page.

How to run music bingo, step by step

1. Print cards 1 to N for N players, shuffle them and hand out one each, with buttons, beans or pencils to mark the squares.
2. Say your first words. The Host Pack has them: “Everyone has a card with sixteen songs on it. I will play one at a time and say its name.”
3. Call each song in the ready call order. Sing it, hum it, play it, or read the title, and tick it on the tick sheet.
4. Read the line under the title, one short fact, then move on to the next song so the game keeps moving.
5. Four in a line across, down or corner to corner wins. Check the winner’s card against the tick sheet.
6. Two BINGOs at once? Both win. Play on for the next line if the room wants more.

Do you need a speaker or a piano?

No. You can sing the first line or hum it, and a room that knows the song will finish it. A piano, a guitar or a recording works too: every title in the three packs was first published before 1929, so the words and traditional tunes are in the public domain in the United States. Modern arrangements and recordings are not, so play a version your venue or church is allowed to use. No recordings are included.

If you’d rather not call from a list, the Host Pack has call chips to cut out and draw from a bowl.

How many cards, and how long

Print one card per player, up to 100. Hand out the cards from 1 upward, shuffled, and follow the ready call order: with 20 to 100 players, the first three BINGOs each have one winner, and the first comes on call 8 or later. No two cards share a line, so two players can’t finish the same line on one call.

A line takes about 15 minutes, a full card about an hour. For a 30-minute session, play one or two lines and let the songs fill the rest.

A few lines to read between songs

Each title in the call order has one short fact under it. A few, as printed in the Host Packs:

• Over There (George M. Cohan, 1917): “Cohan said he wrote it in the morning on the way to work.”
• Home on the Range (Brewster Higley and Daniel Kelley, 1873): “A doctor wrote the words as a poem in a Kansas cabin.”
• The Old Rugged Cross (George Bennard, 1913): “Bennard was an evangelist; he wrote it while traveling between meetings in Michigan.”
• O Little Town of Bethlehem (Phillips Brooks, 1868): “Brooks wrote it for the children of his Philadelphia parish after a visit to Bethlehem.”

Making it easy for every player

• Big print. Every title on every card is 22 pt or larger, depending on the pack.
• Easy markers. Buttons are the easiest to see and to pick up; beans and pencils work too.
• A screen. Each pack has TV slides for a common-room screen, so players see the title as you call it.
• Picture bingo for the room that would rather look. Christmas Picture Bingo and Winter Picture Bingo put a picture with its word in every square, with 16 Large Print cards (4 x 4) in each set.

The Music Bingo Bundle puts all three packs in one download, 300 cards in all: hymns at the church social, carols in December and sing-along songs on any afternoon. For calling bingo to a big Christmas crowd, see our guide on how to call Christmas bingo, and for every game we make for older adults, our games for seniors page.