WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
• paper
• crayons
• clipboards, books, or other hard surfaces for drawing (optional)

BEFORE YOU START:

Gather enough sheets of blank white paper for a few per player. Set these papers, along with the crayons, in the center of your game space. The floor is a good option as long as you have clipboards or books to use as hard surfaces for drawing. Otherwise, this game can be played around the dinner table.

TIME TO PLAY!

Welcome your family to the game and let them know they’ll need their creative brains turned all the way up!

Give each player a clipboard or book (if not playing around a table) and a piece of paper. When you say, “Go,” each person will use crayons to draw a story on paper. Encourage creativity! Remind your family members to think of characters and settings, and, of course, to be as silly as they’d like! These are THEIR stories! There’s just one rule: no words allowed! Allow your family a few minutes to complete their pictures (base the amount of time on the age of your children). When someone finishes a story, instruct her to hold it to her chest to hide it until it’s time to share.

Once everyone has finished drawing, instruct each player to pass his story to the person on his left, or simply swap stories if you’re playing the game with two people. Give everyone a minute or so to look over the story. Once everyone has had a chance to examine his family member’s creation, it’s time to tell a story!

Select one player to go first. This family member will use the pictures she sees on the piece of paper to tell the story she believes the player was trying to create. Encourage your family to have fun with it and really stretch their minds and imaginations! After this person shares her interpretation, the original creator gets to tell the group the actual story. After this, repeat the process with the next person, and so on.

REMEMBER!

Typically, when we think of storytelling we think of books, TV shows, or movies. We (most likely) didn’t have a hand in these stories. Our role is typically to sit back, take the story in, decide if we liked it or not, and then carry on. This is not the case with our Creator! His story did not end when the Bible was complete. In fact, the story has continued on, and each of us gets to be part of it. God is creating new stories every single day, and He uses you and me! Remind your children that they just got to look at someone else’s story and bring it to life on his behalf; God is the Creator of the most wonderful story and He uses our lives to bring His story glory every day. Wow!