When children are old enough for Youth Group, Icebreaker Games become even more important. With advancing maturity, comes increasing self-consciousness. There's nothing so stereotypical as a group of pre-teens, or teenagers, all stoically holding up the walls of any room in which they're meeting. You need icebreaker games to get them to loosen up and start interacting. As a Sunday School teacher, it’s your responsibility to plan for and lead icebreaker games. But what if you’ve never done it before? What if you don’t know any icebreaker games? That’s why we put this collection together.

To identify the best icebreaker games, we asked a bunch of people to tell us their favorite icebreaker games - games they would happily recommend to new teachers, because they work. Then, from the games described to us, we picked the best ones.

Currently the games are divided into two pages. One, this one, has youth group icebreaker games. The other one it the group icebreaker game page for younger children. Of course, many games are suitable for a broad age range. Games that will work for both younger children and youth groups are repeated on each page. You only have to look at the one page for your age group, to find all the games we have for your class.

Who Am I?

• Contributed by: a teacher
• Ages: middle school, high school, young adult, teen, youth

I use this all the time. I announce a theme - like Bible Characters, or pop stars or candy bars or TV shows or anything. I prepare a series of Index cards with these things on them - like, let's say I use Bible Characters - I write stuff like Noah, Jacob, David, Rebekah - you know, the topics - on the cards. Then they get taped to each kid's back. The kids then are trying to identify what is taped to their backs by asking questions about the topic - they can't ask a direct question, and they can't ask more than one question of each person that is there. Sometimes, I have them write down their clues and the person who gave them to them - then they have to learn names too. It's a lot of fun.

Who Am I? (Version Two)

• Contributed by: a teacher
• Ages: middle school, high school, young adult, teen, youth

My favorite Ice-Breaker game is when you get a few members of the group to sit at the front of the room and write celebrity names on the board behind them. The people facing them have to answer questions with yes or no answers only to help the person find out who they are. Eg: "Am I tall?", "Am I a singer?", "Am I an athlete?" This game encourages people to speak out in a group.

Icebreaker Bingo

• Contributed by: anonymous
• Ages: middle school, high school, young adult, teen, youth

I've played this at work functions (when two branches merged and people didn't know each other) and also in high school. It would work for middle school, high school or young adult. Each player gets a piece of paper with a 5x5 grid. In each square of the grid is written an experience or a description. Examples could be things like "was born outside the US", "is wearing a green shirt", "plays guitar", "wears glasses", "has more than 2 siblings", etc. Each player can have the same bingo grid. Each person has to find people who match the the descriptions. No person can be used for more than one square. The first person to complete a row yells bingo and gets a prize. You can let people keep playing and award a prize for filling in all the squares, or the most squares. It's a good way to get people to talk to a large number of people, and learn facts about them. You also have to know their names since you have to write them down.

Circle Toss

• Contributed by: anonymous
• Ages: middle school, high school, young adult, teen, youth

I remember this game from when I went to camp. In it, the leader has the group get in a circle, and then brings out several random objects, it really doesn't matter what, as long as they can be thrown. The leader starts with one of the objects, saying one of the kids names, and throwing it to them. That kid throws it to someone else, saying their name, and so on and so forth. When it gets back to the leader, he/she brings out another object and repeats the process. This can be repeated as many times as objects you have. For added fun, you can time it, and see how fast they can get it while still clearly saying the next persons name. You can challenge them to see how they can change the way they are standing to make the process faster, also.

Come to Order

• Contributed by: a high school teacher
• Ages: preschool, early grades, older primary, middle school, high school, young adult, teen, youth

My favorite "get to know each other game" is standing in line. I was introduced to it as a girl guide and have used it often when we met in a new group of people and as a high school teacher with new classes. It only takes a few minutes, but you suddenly know a lot about people, if you can remember :-)

This game is good for all ages, if you give a little thought to the criteria you line up after. Preschoolers, for example, won’t know the alphabet. A Captain calls out what the rule for the line up is, for instance by height, and people line up. When the line has been formed everybody introduces themselves and shakes hands with their neighbors in the line. Repeat four or five times with new rules.

Criteria for forming the line can be:

• Age, youngest first
• Height, smallest first
• Alphabetically by given name, family name, town you come from, street you live in, ...
• Shoe size,
• Length of hair
• Size of nose (great discussions arise :-)
• Height you can jump etc.

Honey Do You Love Me?

• Contributed by: a youth group member
• Ages: older primary, middle school, high school, young adult, teen, youth

This is a game that I played with my youth group and had a LOT of fun. The suggested age range is probably older-primary through young adult, but it seems to be enjoyable for almost anyone. It's called "Honey Do You Love Me?" Any number of people can play. Everyone sits in a circle, and one person is picked to start the game. The basic play goes like this: The person who is "it" says to someone else in the room, "Honey, do you love me?" The person they ask must reply "Honey, I love you, but I just can't smile." (obviously, without smiling!) If they can do it without smiling, the person who was "it" must keep asking people around the room until someone smiles. Then they're it. The person who is "it" can use whatever theatrics they'd like...batting eyelashes, making faces, silly voices...to try to get the other person to smile.

Human Knot

• Contributed by: a youth group member
• Ages: older primary, middle school, high school, young adult, teen, youth

We played a human knot game in schools and camps. It's most suitable for older-primary age students and older. A group of 8-16 people stand in a small circle facing each other. Everyone sticks their hands into the center of the circle and randomly grabs someone else's hand with each of their own hands. The objective of the game is to untangle this "human knot" without anyone letting go of a hand, ending up with one large circle (although sometimes, two separate or linked circles might be the end result). The participants have to step over or under each others linked arms, with the close physical proximity and silly maneuvers breaking the ice between strangers. This game also requires team work and decent leadership skills in one or more participants.

Middle Name Game

• Ages: early grades, older primary, middle school
• Contributed by: a youth ministry director

(This is a variant of 'Come to Order.' We're listing it separately because of the element of competition added - and as a vote of confidence, considering its contributor. )
Here's one the kids love: The Middle Name Game If you have enough kids, divide them into two teams (the more kids, the longer the game will last). Once the teams have been determined, have them line up alphabetically according to their middle names. The first team to accomplish this correctly wins. If you have a smaller group or you'd rather not have a winning team/losing team, you could always do one, big, long line instead.

Morning Workout

• Contributed by: Tona P., Finland
• Ages: preschool, early grades, older primary, middle school, high school, young adult, teen, youth

This was something our leaders at theater-creativity camp often started the day with when I was 12-15 (youngest kids at camp were around 7-8). This game works well for children in early grades, and would probably work with younger kids too. It can be fun even for adults with the right modifications. It's very simple, and sounds boring, but after a few rounds everyone is warmed up and usually giggling.

Everyone sits in a circle, with legs extended (or knees drawn up, doesn't matter) in front of them. The leader describes the game, which goes like this: Everyone lies down on their backs. The first person (usually a leader or someone who knows how it goes) sits up and says "Hi, I'm Susie!". Then everyone else sits up too and chorus "Hello Susie!". Everyone down again, next person, repeat. When everyone has done this once you add something about yourself, like "Hi, I'm Susy and I like flowers!" (... and I come from Michigan / and I'm 12 years old / etc). The group sits up and choruses "Hello again Susie!". The later rounds can be more or less giggly/challenging depending on how closely you instruct the participants to match the type of statement the leader makes. For the first time you can do all rounds with only basic information and little "I like" or "I dislike" statements. (And it doesn't have to be real "sit ups", but for older kids you can make it more challenging by deciding how people should should move, or piling on extra moves for the later rounds, f.ex. sit up and then raise your arms/touch your toes/wiggle your nose/or any combination.)

Know an icebreaker we're missing?

Do you know a good icebreaker game for older children (youth, teens, high school or even college aged) that we're missing? Share it!

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