UNO Simplified

A good friend of mine, who had recently served as the Primary chorister in her ward, had an UNO board she let me borrow.  She had made it strong and durable, I'm sure in the hopes that she would never need to make another one again.  Her Primary could have played UNO weekly for a year, and it would have stood the test of time.  Lucky me, I totally reaped the benefit of her efforts to make a long-lasting visual.

I checked out other resources (here) to find out how to make the game of UNO work in Primary... most mentioned breaking the Primary into teams, dealing out a given number of cards to each team... and so on.  My Primary is on the LARGE side (65-or-so in junior, 70+ in senior), so I am all for keeping things as simple as possible, lest control be lost to the children.  This is what I did to simplify:

I printed (and laminated... more on my favorite tool another day) the words to the song, keeping each phrase within three lines.  I added pictures for the younger children that can't read yet.

My friend's game board has two sides (wahoo!).  She had applied contact paper over both, so tape works like a charm.  I prepared for both verses of the song today, but we only got through the first verse.

I sorted my UNO cards, pulling out only the 1's, 2's, Wilds, and Skip cards (at least what I think were the Skips cards... we have a different version, called UNO H2O, so I'm not really sure what the cards mean, since I have never played it.  Ever).  And, I'll admit it, I somewhat strategically placed the cards in order in "the pile."

I would choose a helper (from our choosing sticks -- with a Primary as large as ours, I know some kids would get overlooked and NEVER be selected if I didn't use the sticks), and they would come up and draw the top card off the pile.  The Primary would then sing the phrase on the selected color, the number of times shown on the card.  The helper would remain up front to give a thumbs up (or not) if the kids did a good job singing.  (If the helper didn't think it was good enough, we would sing it AGAIN.  Imagine that.)

IF a Skip was selected, the helper would get to remove a line from the phrase on that color before we sang it.

IF a Wild was drawn, the helper got to randomly choose a WILD way of singing (from these fun action cards here), and we would sing the entire song through while in action. Trickier than it sounds, especially if you are also trying to LEAD.

I think it was a success.  Junior Primary is always a little hard to read... occasionally noisy... occasionally inattentive... but feedback from the teachers was positive, so we will continue playing another week.

Senior Primary enjoyed the game (simple as it was), and only got a little wild on the WILDCARD singing.  We will definitely play again next week, but I plan to tame the actions down.

In response to Kelli's question below, this UNO board is made on a 20x30" foam board.  Colored computer paper was cut to 7-1/2" lengths (2 sheets used per line), then glued in place.  This was done on both sides of the board (room for two verses... oh yeah), then clear contact paper covers both sides of the board, making it super easy to tape whatever words or pictures you need.  It will last for-e-ver.