When you walk by the social
work office, it may look like we are playing games all the time and no your not
wrong. A lot of what I do in my
classroom is game based. It seems that
every board game you could imagine can be turned into a opportunity to teach. I use them for 2 main reasons.
- Board games are a great way to practice many important social skills. In a board game you have to take turns, deal with winning, losing, learn how to encourage others, use patience, and conversation skills. ( A trick I use for my friends who cannot deal with losing a game is I sabotage the game so that I win. This allows the student to struggle through the anger in a structured setting and learn in the moment.)
- I turn the games into a therapy game. Adding social emotional questions or targeted questions to the game can easily change any game into a therapy game.
Some
example of this are:
·
Jenga-
I have questions that the kids must answer on each of the pieces. When they
pick a Jenga piece, they have to answer the question
·
Uno-
I give each color a feeling and when they play that color card, they have to
share a time they felt that way or a time they saw someone else feeling that
way.
·
Don’t Break
the Ice- This is a great game for kids that need to slow down! I also have various coping skills on each of
the ice cubes. As the kids knock out an
ice cube, they must demonstrate the coping skills.
·
Guess
Who- I have replaced the characters with behaviors (good and bad)and have
the kids play by describing the various
behavior (if they are good/bad, what consequences could be, why someone would
have that behavior, ect…)
·
Candyland-
Every time they pick a card, they must also pick a question to answer. If they get the question correct, they can
move their game piece. Questions can be
targeted to any area I am working on (problem solving, how would you feel, ect…).
There are so many other games that can be added to the list,
but these are my favorites. Have fun trying some of these games at home :)
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