More than ever before, children are having a hard time building social and emotional learning skills. These are the skills that help people express and manage their feelings in a productive way. These are also the skills that help children set and reach goals, make good decisions and learn empathy towards others.
A Penny for Your Thoughts: A Survival Kit for Kids & Adults is a creative, interactive communication game comes with 80 hand-drawn cards divided up into a mix of emotions, locations, characters and reactions. Players roll the dice, and then, depending on the colour select cards from each pile and match up an emotion with a location, a character and a response (for example: I felt frustrated/at a friend/at the park/I can take a few deep breaths). Then, each player shares his or her story and talks about the positive responses that can be used the next time the same situation occurs.
Best part? There’s no real right way to play this game because it’s all based on how your child conveys his or her emotions. Your child wants to collect four emotion cards? Great! He or she had the same emotion in two locations? Let’s talk about it. Penny for Your Thoughts is about getting your children to open up, so it’s totally okay to play by your own rules.
These cards are the creation of two Oregon women – Kathryn Snell-Ryan, an art therapist and mother of two, and Janine McGraw, a couples and family therapist, both in private practice. “Good communication in our work and lives is essential, though ‘getting it right’ is just as frustrating and challenging for us as it is everyone else” said Kathryn. “We created this game to inspire and teach kids to communicate how they feel, what their fears and dreams are, who makes them laugh, and what makes them feel important or small,” says co-creator Janine.
Find more information about A Penny for Your Thoughts: A Survival Kit for Kids & Adults here.
