Social Story Block and Dice Game

Product Description

Social/Emotional 5

Skills

• Promotes emotional readiness for variety of social situations through rehearsal and role play of scenarios depicted on cubes.
• Through the game’s role plays and interview process, players are provided the opportunity to practice reading and interpreting facial expressions and the emotions attached to them in order to react and respond appropriately.
• Through the game’s role plays and interview process, players practice identifying social and environmental stimuli that trigger emotions which interfere with reciprocal social engagement and develop coping mechanisms with the guidance of a facilitator or other game players. 

Play Ideas

• Act out scenarios on different blocks to answer the question: "What does sharing or making eye contact actually look like and how does it make the player and other players feel?"
• Use dolls or puppets to act out scenarios.
• Hide blocks in sensory bin to select the scenario dice rather than rolling them. 

Adaptation Ideas

• Introduce concepts or game versions over time (limit the number /types of blocks during play to those concepts player(s) are familiar with when first learning game).
• Facilitator should practice with players independently before player works within group.
• Limit size of group when first learning game (2-6 players) to build confidence in familiarity with nature of game expectations.
• Group players in teams to share the load of answering game questions or role-playing.

Communicative 4

Skills

• Promotes use and recognition of facial expressions and other nonverbal cues utilized during daily social exchanges through the rehearsal and role play of cube scenarios, typically with facilitator assistance.
• Promotes reciprocal communication development by requiring players to ask and answer questions based on the cube scenarios.
• Promotes the breakdown of social indifference by providing clear illustrations and explanations of social “rules”, thus creating more sure-footing for initiating social contact.  

Play Ideas

• Allow participant to choose block, look at picture only and verbally describe the scenario and its meaning.
• Using the ‘how do I feel?’ block, have facilitator imitate expressions with their face. Ask participant to say the feeling out loud or point to on block.
• Have participant tell a story of a time they encountered scenarios. 

Adaptation Ideas

• Allow for provision of picture icons or stacks of ready words from which to select to provide answers to questions on die or posed by players / facilitator\
• In advance of game, create enlarged copies of sides of blocks and provide written or illustrated prompts from which players can decode scenario or from which he / she can select to answer game questions.

Cognitive 3

Skills

• Facilitates comprehension of social “rules” through clear, thoughtful written first-person stories and illustrations, and then reinforced through the game’s role plays and interview-style play.
• Facilitates the development of players’ social environment analytical skills through examination of the cubes’ scenarios and subsequent role plays and interview-style play.
• Facilitates the development of problem-solving skills through players’ answering of questions related to the cubes’ scenarios and how players would chose to act given a particular social situation. 

Play Ideas

• Brainstorm real life examples of scenarios on blocks. For example, using the ‘sharing’ block, ask “What kind of things can we share with others?”
• Replicating block scenarios by utilizing story boards.
• Place blocks in order of what participant is best at and not the best at. 

Adaptation Ideas

Introduce concepts one at a time, or use limited number of blocks during play.