The Statue Game

🎯 Objective: Combine emotions and story

👦🏻 Target age: 5–12 years

⏰ Duration: 5–15 minutes

👉 This game consists of a few exercises to learn how to become a statue, similar to the game “Red Light, Green Light.” You can also use “Simon Says.”

👉 Skills developed: Listening, imagining, and appropriating a story.

🟢 Game Rules

Children form a circle, standing, facing outward. The teacher stands in the center and tells a story (the story below or any story deemed appropriate). When the teacher claps hands, everyone freezes like a statue expressing the emotions and sensations of the character in the story.

🔵 Example

🗣️: “We are in the countryside, in a vast empty plain, far from any houses. A long straight road passes through, with a bus stop. A child is waiting.”

Note: The waiting can be extended for hours or even two or three days,

1) by evolving feelings and sensations such as weariness, fatigue, thirst, hunger, sleepiness, fear, drowsiness,

2) by varying weather conditions: drizzle, heavy rain, blazing sun, strong wind, hail, thunder, lightning, etc.

🗣️: “A bus arrives in the distance. It doesn’t stop. It goes to the depot. Another arrives, but in the wrong direction. The correct bus passes, but the child wakes up too late. Finally, the correct bus arrives (or a bus that didn’t stop returns, or backs up), and the character gets on and sits down. The bus is crowded.”

Note: You can also extend the story until the child returns home, emphasizing reactions and first actions: collapsing, sleeping, falling into parents’ arms or equivalents, eating, drinking, shouting, crying with relief, feeding the cat, dog, birds, fish, waking from a nightmare, etc.

In short, you can let imagination run free, keeping in mind that this is for children!