This past weekend in small group we played a great creative story-telling game in our small groups. I can’t claims the idea as my own. Our children’s ministry director actually came up with the idea, but she said it was ok if I shared it with you, so here goes.
We were learning about Joseph, and the point of this game was to demonstrate that, no matter how bad things might seem to us, God is always there to protect us.
Here’s what you need:
- A small group of kids with a leader
- Imaginations
- A set of 30-50 cards with pictures printed on them. Click here to download a sample set to get you started.
You can also use Google Images or magazine clippings to find the pictures, but the key is to find various object which could lead to creativity and which could be easily incorporated into a story about the worst day ever. Amongst others, we had pictures of:
- A Shark
- A firetruck
- Police car
- Medic
- Ambulance
- Tow Truck
- Sinking Ship
- Space Shuttle
- Peacock
- Monkey
- Horse
- Sled Dogs
- Earthquakes
- Lightening
- Darkness
- Burning buildings
- Broken Computers
- And, some really of the wall pictures like a horse carrying a cat.
Here’s how you play:
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- Determine the setting and characters. We used the room we were in as the setting (though the stories consistently took us out of there) and the kids in the small group as the characters.
- Start with all the cards face down.
- The leader picks the first card, turns it over in front of him/her and starts the story based on the picture.
- The next person is then given the stack of remaining cards, face down.
- They must repeat the story, in its entirety (we allowed for slight modifications and summarization as appropriate), up to that point.
- They then flip the next card and add on to the story based on the picture turned over.
- All pictures left face up in front of the player who drew it to help other players remember the story.
- Play continues until everyone has had a turn. In our game, the leader who started also picked the last card to bring everything to a conclusion.
I played this game five or six times with a group of six fourth graders, and we had a ball. Is was a great time of laughing, bonding and fellowship. Even the normally reserved kids got in on the action!
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