Child psychologist Svitlana Royz and the NGO “Smart Osvita” announced the launch of a new game “Invisible Gifts: Find Your Strength”. In the authors’ view, the game is designed to encourage reflection, self-cognition and emotional healing.

“Invisible Gifts” can be used both in a group and with just one player. The game is for children from 3 to 10 years old. For a children’s group the number of players is unlimited.

This game is about the body, behavior, and the power of words, which together provide powerful resources for every day.

Thanks to “Invisible Gifts”, you can:

• Regain contact with your body;
• Become comfortable with something new;
• Learn to say “No”;
• Regain a sense of control;
• Perceive the boundaries of your body; and
• Learn self-support and calm down.

The author of the idea, a well-known Ukrainian psychologist Svitlana Royz, said: “The more we and our children feel our bodies, the more we can distinguish and withstand different bodily sensations, the easier it will be for us to cope with stress and process traumatic experiences. This game for children was created to help parents, educators, psychologists, and leaders of children’s groups to realize the process of “embodiment”. The game helps to create a metaphor and to realize: our strength and our “gifts” are not in “magic wands”, but in our body.”

Svitlana Royz believes the game helps you work simultaneously on several levels: the physical level (each “gift” is accompanied by a movement, a stretching exercise, an exclamation or a touch) and the level of thoughts and beliefs. The main task is to help the child feel strong, regain stability so that he or she can withstand the load of emotions and change and choose new behavior and reactions.

You can choose the game format which you consider the most appropriate. You don’t necessarily have to print it out: you can read the tasks for the cards online with your child, do the exercises, or use rhymes. You can offer it to groups of children as an exercise, or you can refer to the game when you have a specific request, such as how to regain a sense of safety; how to learn to say “No,” or how to feel ground beneath your feet. Together with your child or children, you can think about when the “power of gifts” will be useful to us. The main task of the game is to feel the power within yourself.

The game can be played in a group or used as an exercise when cards only are required. It will allow you to initiate important conversations with a child or a group of children. In this way, play becomes one of the best ways for a child to demonstrate his or her ideas and concepts about the world around them.

The game offers several templates: a figurine of a girl or a boy, on which you can put pre-cut “gift amplifiers”. There are plenty of them: tails, wings, unicorn horn, legs and hooves, fur, claws, teeth, eyes, ears, heart, everything related to the body. All these elements have flaps to be pushed into special slots around the images so that they hold well.

The authors of the game suggest reinforcing the idea that your body has magical properties with simple funny exercises, exclamations, and a “magic” poetic line or saying. All this will help to “wake up” your inner forces through action and locate them in the body. That being said, all that will remain invisible, secret to the outside world.

The game “Invisible Gifts: Find Your Strength” has already been made publicly available. It can be downloaded for free at the link, printed out, and played.

The project was created by:

• Author Svitlana Royz;
• Editor Tetyana Stus;
• Designers Roman and Olena Marchyshyn; and
• Illustrator Inna Chernyak.

The game was created as part of the Safe School program implemented by East Europe Foundation with funds from Eurasia Foundation.