One of the unsaid goals of our youth ministry, and I'm assuming most youth ministries, is to have our students mix with those who they usually don't talk to or interact with. Usually there is a pretty noticeable gap when we host our game nights once a month between the "athletic" kids and the "non-athletic" kids. There are students in the gym playing volleyball or basketball while others are sitting at tables coloring or playing a board game. It is important to note that there is nothing wrong with having two separate groups of students. It might even be healthy that everyone is not together all the time. However, we found that having a quick Uno tournament was one way to bring everyone together for a fun competition.

I am almost certain that every High School student who was at this certain game night knew how to play Uno; however, we did have an adult leader be the judge/mediator for rule discrepancies. We divided our students into four or five different groups to play the game. Each group played until there was a person who was the winner and a person who won second place. This was followed by these two people from each group being sent to a championship round. The winner of the championship round won the prize.

The truth is that this was extremely easy activity, but the students loved it. This simple Uno tournament reminds us that sometimes we don't need to reinvent new youth group games. Instead we must go back to older games that have been around for a while and reintroduce them to students!