how to play bunco: super fun gno (girls' night out)

This month has been dedicated to spending time with friends–cultivating old friendships, spending time with current friends, and appreciating all the great people in my life.

Spending more time with my spouse and more meaningful, quality time with my kids.

One of the things that I did this month with friends was to re-start a Bunco group for my girlfriends.

Bunco is the ultimate girls’ night out activity because it’s easy, it’s quick, and it’s essentially pretty mindless. You can play and chat and not worry about using your brain all that much.

It’s been a bunco month. We didn’t stop with our girls’ night bunco; we even played a bit of family bunco.

I highly recommend it.

Here’s the skinny. . .

How to Play Bunco (A Super Fun GNO–Girls’ Night Out):

First things first. You need a group.

I was lucky in that we already had a Bunco group from a few years back, so I started with that list. Then I reached out to friends from my neighborhood, elementary school, preschool, summertime pool, and bookclub so the group would be diverse and fun.

I sent this initial email:

I’ve been chatting w/ some folks, and we were talking about how we’d LOVE to get into the Bunco swing for 2015!

If you are interested, we’d love to get rolling in February.

We’ll try to schedule a game the first Friday of each month with one person hosting and providing drinks and table snacks. Three other people can bring appetizers so that no one is really carrying too heavy a load.

Really–there’s NO pressure here, if it’s not a good time or you’re not interested; maybe just reply back to let us know if you’re interested in being on the play list or sub list, and we’ll get a group going for Feb.

Also, if you want to include anyone else, reply back and let us know their name and email so we can reach out. The more, the merrier!

Sound good?

Let’s make 2015 the year we’re taking care of ourselves!! Girl time is SO important!!

If folks responded, awesome! If not, I took it as a hint.

I started a Google contacts group called ‘Bunco 2015’ to make sending emails easier.

And then I used VolunteerSpot as our sign-up. On VolunteerSpot, I made Bunco 2015 a group page with an event every month from February through June. Each month, I made three sign-ups for appetizers; one sign-up for host; and unlimited for players.

The cool thing about VolunteerSpot is that the hosts for each month can add a comment with their address, no one has to send out evites or multiple emails, and we can all share the link to invite other friends.

After we had our group, I started to gather supplies.

To play Bunco, you need:

dice (you’ll need about twelve dice total)
a bell
score sheets
table
pens or pencils
sometimes groups make players wear crazy hats or fun necklaces or hold silly stuffed things when they get a bunco

Grab our score sheets and table cards here, and make sure that you print enough!

You’ll need the Score Cards which are printed two per sheet.

You can download the Score Sheets here: bunco printables | teachmama.com

And if you choose to share–which we hope you do!–please link to this post and not the attachment page! Thank you!

And you’ll need Table Cards.

The printables have enough for six tables, though that means you’ll have a really big group. You may only need three or four tables.

You can download the Table Cards here: bunco table cards _ teachmama.com

And if you choose to share–which we hope you do!–please link to this post and not the attachment page! Thank you!

To play Bunco:

12 players break into 3 tables of 4 players each.
Tables are numbered; table 1 is the ‘head table’; table 2 is middle; table 3 is last.
Players sit across from their ‘temporary team’ member at each table.
One player at head table rings bell to signal start of game.
Players at each table take turns rolling 3 dice, trying to roll the same number as the round (ex: roll 1’s during the 1st round = points earned; 2’s during 2nd round, etc.).
Players keep rolling until they score no points, after which time they hand the dice to the next player. A table scorekeeper tallies points for both teams.
When the head table earns 21 points, the bell is rung, and the round is over.
Points are added. Each table will have a winning team and a losing team. Players write their score on their personal score sheet and indicate win (W) or loss (L).
Players either stay or move tables depending on whether they won or lost the round. Instructions are on the table cards. ‘Temporary team’ members MUST switch after each game.

BUNCO = 3 of the same number rolled matches round number (ex: three 2’s during 2nd round = BUNCO! → BUNCO = 21 points

Baby Bunco = 3 of same number rolled does not match round number (ex: three 2’s during the 4th round) = Baby Bunco → Baby Bunco = 5 points

You can download our Bunco Rules Sheet here:

You can download the Bunco Rules Sheet here: bunco RULES _ family teachmama.com

And if you choose to share–which we hope you do!–please link to this post and not the attachment page! Thank you!

Remember, that the fun part about Bunco is the prizing!

Everyone pays $5 to play! And then, after all of the games are played, count the pot.

50% of total pot goes to the player with the most buncos

30% of total pot goes to the player with the high score

20% of total pot goes to the player with the most wins

$5 goes to the player with the lowest score

$5 goes to the player with the most losses

But you cannot forget about the Bunco snacks! Check out how we do snacks for our games: Best Bunco Snacks

The great thing about Bunco is that it’s crazy easy and that you need very little brain power to make it work. It’s the ideal game to play while chatting with friends, catching up, and trying to solve world problems.

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This post is part of our #livefocused in 2015 series; February is our month to focus on friendship. It’s been a blast.

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