How to Play the Storytelling Card Game

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Morning Glory Treatment Center
for Children
© Copyright 2009
1207 Pigeon Forge Road,
Pflugerville, Texas, 78660 USA
Phone/FAX : 512-251-3298

Storytelling Card Game
Stimulate Imagination, Enhance Communication

How To Play

OBJECTIVES:

• To aid in diagnosis and assessment
• Increase attention span
• Provide cognitive/academic skills training
• Enhance communication skills

SUPPLIES

• One deck of standard playing cards.

INSTRUCTIONS

The facilitator puts down a stack of cards and explains that every player may flip over only two cards. The facilitator will start first and may skip or have an extra turn (see note below.) Each child then makes up a story line incorporating the two cards into the story (e.g. a Queen and a “9” card might prompt a storyline such as, "There once was a lovely queen who lived in a castle surrounded by nine dragons....").

Arrange the cards in a spiraling pattern like the diagram. This pattern helps promote the flow and continuity of the storytelling. The facilitator also should provide nurturing elements to the storyline at therapeutic moments.

The next child is then dealt two cards with which to continue the imaginative story, building on his/her predecessor's storyline.

Play Therapy Techniques

When working with abused children, it is very important to listen carefully to their stories. Each player has either seemingly nothing or too much to tell. Sometimes there appears to be no continuity to the story, but that is all right.

Therapeutic moments happen which allow the facilitator to respond to the child with another story line. For example, a player draws a Queen and a Deuce and says, “There was a queen bee who buzzed around and stung these two boys real bad.” The facilitator might continue the story line with a “6” and “8” cards by saying reassuringly, “the boys ran to their neighbor in apartment #6 who helped stop the bee stings with 8 spoonfuls of ammonia and sent them to the hospital.”

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