If the story starts to drag, try placing one of the members on the group in the middle of the action, forcing them to learn how to switch from third-person to first-person perspective (we all want to raise little Faulkners after all, don’t we?).īecause this game is all about adapting on the fly, it should be a fit for all school-age kids.
Ask the kids which version they’d prefer to play and set the parameters at the beginning. You can make it rapid-fire (even adding a timer to make it really high pressure) or let the story build before jumping to the next person. There are as many ways to play as there are story types. They can add one sentence or they add five, just as long as they set up a cliffhanger for the next person who catches the ball (“…the dragon ran into a family of bunnies and then she…”).
The person with the ball starts by speaking those magical words, “Once upon a time…” They then toss the ball to the next person who continues the story.
