Vladimir Pupo

LEI 4724

Activity: Story Telling with a Yarn

Source: Anna Evans of Longwood University, January 04, 2014. Retrieved on February 15, 2017
form http://www.recreationtherapy.com/tx/txsmsoc.htm
Equipment needed: colorful yarn ball, or can also use different strings of different colors.

Activity description:
1. Ask everyone to get into groups of 8-10, can be a circle or straight line, triangle, square,
in order to challenge individuals.
2. Age group: children, adolescents, adults, and elderly.
3. Explain activity.
4. Ask participants to choose a setting for a story
5. Tell the participants that the first person will start the story and will speak until the yarn
color ends and then they will pass it to the person next to them, this person now gets to
continue the story.
6. Hand the yarn ball to the person who will start the activity and tell them to hold it until
instructed to start
7. Important!!! The person needs to slowly unravel the yarn ball in order to have time to
come up with an idea.
8. The main purpose is to help individuals with anxiety, help with socialization, and
creativity.
9. For an extra challenge you can have individuals create a new character every time the
yarn ball color finishes.

Leadership considerations:
1. When working with individuals with social anxiety and with socialization problems
remember to give them time in order to feel comfortable when speaking and encourage
them to take advantage of the length of the yarn in order to get comfortable speaking.
2. Ask individuals if they felt too much anxiety from the activity
3. When working with individual who are mute you can have them write down their part
of the story.
4. For a person a person with ADHD you can give them extra time in order to process the
information and give them clues of what was said. You can also change the rules and
have them start a new story or have them start the activity.