Play-Based Counseling Activities

We have talked about the physical tools we might use in classroom lessons or individual counseling, we can also use basic props as counseling tools, too, to integrate more play! While “play therapy” typically refers to child-centered play therapy (which is a great, evidence-based approach you can read a little bit more about in this post), this post will focus on different play-based counseling activities you can use in all parts of your school counseling program. Even better? They’re ideas using items you probably already own!

Play is an accessible language for all children. Regularly incorporating it in your program encourages engagement, is culturally sensitive, and is a great avenue for relationship building. At just about any age, children learn through the language of play. So, it’s something you can use in elementary, middle, or secondary environments (with adjustments for age, topic, and interests).

We can do this through all levels of our program, from individual counseling sessions to small group counseling meetings, to classroom lessons.

Keep reading for play-based counseling activities you can use with your students to help with regulation, self-control, social skills, and more.

In this post, we will discuss using 4 different props to add more play into your program – a ball, blocks, bubbles, play dough – plus a few quick games you can play that don’t require anything!

Ball

Regulating: Rhythm can be super helpful in helping students to regulate. Bouncing a ball back and forth is simple and doesn’t feel so ‘risky’ to kids when they’re dysregulated. The beat, the bounce – it seems to reset the brain in wonderful ways.

Processing: For some kiddos, talking about feelings and problems comes really easily. For others, it feels uncomfortable and vulnerable. For those friends, sometimes just playing catch while you talk is enough to make it more comfortable for them.

Non-Verbal Communication: Try an old-school game of Silent Ball! To play: Have all students stand or sit on the tables/desks, count down, “3, 2, 1, silent” and pass the ball to another person in the space. A player must sit down if they drop the ball, makes a bad pass, or they talk or make noise. The game continues until there is just one player left! This is a super versatile activity. Not only is it great for students who are practicing reading body language, as they have to communicate non-verbally in order to keep the game going. It’s also awesome for practicing self-control, staying focused, patience, and turn-taking.

We even use this in our goal setting lesson to have classes or small groups work together to achieve a goal. Students silently toss the ball with the following guidelines: each person must get the ball, you cannot pass the ball to the person next to you, and they will be timed. They have to collaborate to create a plan and work together on the next round to beat their time!

Blocks

Blocks are another versatile and hands-on tool that we can use in play-based counseling activities to engage students in meaningful ways. You can use regular blocks or Legos for these activities!

Being Mindful: Looking for a fun, simple activity for kiddos or groups to help them learn how to physically regulate or calm their minds and bodies in the moment? Try having your students spend some time stacking blocks. When engaged in some simple, mindful stacking, students can focus on their body movements and the process of building, helping them stay present and calm. You can bring their attention to this by saying things like, “Notice how your breathing has slowed down since you started stacking” or “Try to take a nice deep breath each time you place a block.”

Overcoming Obstacles: Students come to us with all kinds of problems and challenges. One way we can help them overcome those challenges is to use blocks! To do this, have your student(s) build an obstacle they are facing. This could be a big test or project, a relationship with a sibling, a teacher they aren’t getting along with, a subject they are struggling in, or just about anything else they bring to your office. Once they have built their obstacle, you can discuss how they chose to represent it or how this particular challenge is impacting them and then knock it down. This metaphorical breaking down of their obstacle can be really powerful on it’s own or, you can expand it a bit more. Before they knock it down, ask them, “What is one thing you can do to overcome this?” and help them realize their own power and control.

Self-Expression: When you are first working with a kiddo and trying to get to know them, using blocks along with those “getting to know you” kinds of questions can be a fun option! You can allow kids free-reign to use the blocks or Legos to build something personal that represents who they are or something they care about or, you can use prompts like:

• “What is something you love to do?”
• “Create something that makes you feel excited.”
• “Something special about me is…”

Collaborating with Others: When working with a small group, blocks can also provide an opportunity for students to work together to compromise and solve problems. When given a prompt like, “Work together to build a structure that can hold this egg” students have to listen to each other’s ideas, decide on a plan, divide the work, figure out how to use their resources well, and communicate all the while.

Bubbles

Bubbles can be a fun and effective way to help your students explore different social and emotional skills through these play-based counseling activities:

Demonstrating Emotions: A great introduction for classes focused on feelings or for kiddos who are working on identifying and managing feelings, grab those bubbles! Bubbles can be a great visual metaphor for our emotions. When you blow a few, ask them what they notice. They’ll likely share that they are different sizes, some pop quickly and some pop slowly. From there, you can say something like, “just like bubbles come in different sizes, some feelings can feel big, small, quick, or slow, but the important thing is that they all come and go.”

Deep Breathing: We know how impactful learning how to breathe deeply can be for our kiddos who need to learn how to calm their brains and bodies. This is another great use for our bubbles. It’s helpful proactively, where kids take a deep breath in and blow out slowly to create big, calm bubbles to learn how their deep breaths should feel. You can also use this reactively with a dysregulated kiddo. You might encourage them to take deep breaths and watch their bubbles, encouraging regulation and mindfulness.

Play-Doh/Clay

Play-Doh is fun for kids to use and can be really helpful to squeeze and manipulate as a regulation tool, but is also can have directive uses as well.

Identifying Feelings: If you are working with students on identifying how feelings look on faces, you can use Play-Doh to form the different faces. You can do this by printing a blank face and putting it into a dry erase pocket or, have them create the faces directly in the Play-Doh using their fingers.

Smash It: This engaging approach can accomplish a few different things:

• Expressing Frustration – If your student is really struggling with anger/frustration/annoyance, you can direct them to create something that makes them feel that way and physically act out that feeling by smashing it.   
• Sorting Helpful vs. Unhelpful Self-Talk – In this activity from our Managing Worry individual curriculum, your students learn about “worry bugs” through an included story. These worry bugs are representative of thoughts. In the corresponding activity, they are asked to sort these bugs to help them learn to identify unhelpful thoughts. If it is a helpful thought, they leave their “worry bug” (balled-up Play-Doh) alone. If it is an unhelpful thought, they smash their worry bug.

Cognitive Restructuring: For kiddos who get stuck in those pesky negative thoughts, pull out the Play-Doh. Because of its workability, it can be a great representation of how we can change and replace our thoughts. For example, if you have a student who is stuck on a fear of failure when it comes to their upcoming spelling bee, you can have them create something with their Play-Doh that represents failure and then use that same Play-Doh to turn it into success.

Role-Playing: Role-playing on it’s own is a great tool to use for practicing social skills like taking-turns or resolving conflict. Play-Doh can be a part of this process, too! For example, if you have a student who pushed someone at recess, you might have them use the Play-Doh to describe what he and the other student were thinking and feeling before and after this happened. Or if you are working with a child on learning how to enter conversation, you can use Play-Doh to act that out. This is especially helpful when you are working 1:1 with a student and can’t play all the characters for them!

Games

We’ve talked before about some of our favorite games for school counselors, but here we are talking about more classroom games that can be included with little to no extra materials.

A Warm Wind Blows: This game is a fun way to help build community in your classes or groups by helping kids find some commonalities. To play: have everyone sit (or stand) in a circle. One person stands in the center and says, “A warm wind blows for anyone who…” and then adds a common trait, experience, or preference (e.g., “…has a pet,” “…likes pizza,” “…has been to the beach”). Anyone who shares that trait must stand up and quickly find another seat. The person in the middle tries to find a seat too, and the one left standing becomes the next leader. You can play as many rounds as you have time for.

Charades: This is another fun and easy one to include, particularly if you are working on emotional identification or body language. Write down various emotions (happy, sad, excited, frustrated, etc.) on slips of paper and place them in a container. Students take turns drawing a slip and acting out the emotion without speaking while the others guess. Once the emotion is guessed, you can discuss the body language, facial expressions, and situations where they might feel that way.

Simon Says: One person (Simon) gives instructions that players must follow, but only if the command starts with “Simon says.” For example, “Simon says touch your toes.” If Simon doesn’t say “Simon says” before the command, anyone who follows it is out of the game. The game can easily be modified to fit your target for lessons. If you are focusing on self-regulation or coping skills, you can give commands like, “Simon says take a deep breath” or “Simon says squeeze and release your fists 3 times”.

When we use play-based counseling activities in our lessons, groups, and sessions, we are helping children build their confidence, creating more engaging lessons, building strong relationships, and ensuring our program is accessible to children of varying abilities. So not only is it good for the kids, but it is also congruent with the ASCA National Model! And we hope you collected a few ideas from this post that you try out with your students.