paper fortune teller - Social Skills Activities for Children with Autism

November 23, 2014June 27, 2026

Free Paper Fortune Tellers: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Games for Counseling and Classroom

To download the PDF files for these three paper fortune tellers, click on the RED link right below here:

CBT Paper Fortune Tellers for Anxiety & Other Issues

Helping children to work on upsetting emotions using cognitive behavioral therapy game activities

Many young people have persistent problems with anxiety, sadness, anger and other upsetting emotions. To maintain engagement in counseling and psycho-education, we need to provide novel approaches and introduce some levity whenever possible.

To check out a dozen other paper fortune tellers, on diverse social skills themes, please click here.

For a summary and links to all the free CBT materials on my website, please click here.

Some suggestions for introducing these Fortune Tellers:

1. Introduce some basics concerning the connection between automatic negative thoughts and negative emotions. I suggest you do this by viewing , with children, this very short video I made:

2. Working in pairs, and taking turns, person number one says, “Spell your name.” For each letter, the child holding the Fortune Teller manipulates the device back and forth.

3. Person number two is then shown the two options appearing on the inner triangles. Person one says, “Pick which one you want.” You can see photos of this farther down on this page.

4. Person one opens up the innermost petals, where four options appear. He tells person two, “Pick A, B, C or D.” Person one reads the option selected. If the option read is a negative thought, person two has to tell how to deal with such thoughts. If the option selected is a positive thought, person two must describe a time when he needed to use such a thought to solve a problem.

I really enjoyed creating these paper devices. Don’t be afraid to try folding them. Here is an illustrated guide to folding them.

My best wishes for your work with children,

Joel Shaul, LCSW

Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.

October 26, 2013August 12, 2026

Paper Fortune Tellers – social skills games for children with ASD’s (and other children too)

This is the main page for my social skills paper fortune tellers. Scroll down to view photos.

Click on these links below for explanations and free downloads of 17 paper fortune tellers.

Quick Picture Guide for Folding Paper Fortune Tellers

Quick Picture Guide for Using These Paper Fortune Tellers in Social / Emotional Skills Work

**For a video demo on folding and using these things by Carla Butorac, SLP, click HERE.*

Paper fortune tellers can be useful therapy / teaching tools, especially for young people with ASD.

*The turn-taking that naturally occurs when two people use a paper fortune teller promotes the reciprocal conversations we are trying to promote.

*Each paper fortune teller emphasizes an important skill area in our social/emotional teaching.

*Paper fortune tellers are engaging and fun.

Here are some tips for using these many paper fortune tellers in your work.

You need to make them in advance yourself. Although some children can fold these things with your supervision, most won’t be able to manage it.
Assess in advance to what extent your client(s) can manipulate the paper fortune tellers with their fingers. Some might not be able to manage it.
Provide one paper fortune teller for each pair of participants. If you give out one per participant, you can end up with solitary play rather than reciprocal interaction.

Joel Shaul, LCSW