Tag: paper fortune teller

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.