Ways to use Jenga during your work with care-experienced children and young people.
A toolkit developed by Blue Cabin, Professor Richard Rose and South Tyneside Council, to help you use Jenga in your work with care-experienced children and young people.
Jenga is a play-based communication and assessment tool and can be used in many creative ways. Here are two games that you might find very helpful, alongside a downloadable checklist at the bottom of the page.
This is an effective game for introductions and relationship-building. Everyone takes part in building the tower. The idea of the game is to take turns to carefully remove one brick at a time using only one hand.
After successful removal, the removed brick is placed back on top of the tower. As bricks are taken away, it becomes less stable and will eventually fall down.
This ends the game.
Take 20 bricks and write a question on each in pencil.
Some can be general questions, but others will be questions to find out further information about the child. Always write in pencil, then you can change the questions on each Jenga brick to gather relevant information for specific topics.
Here are some example questions to get you started.
Each person playing then answers this question and each answer is recorded on a blank sheet of paper.
The brick is then placed back on top of the tower.
The Creative Life Story Work website is designed to share ideas, tools and inspiration for practitioners. It’s important that practitioners take responsibility for making sure the life story work they deliver is safe, high quality and appropriate for the children and young people they support.
