What Did You Say?

What Did You Say? - A game of nonverbal language

Reading body language can be difficult for some people. What one person seems to just "pick up", another person may need to be taught. Not understanding how to interpret facial expressions, gestures, postures, personal distance and the like can make effective communication difficult and may negatively impact relationships. What Did You Say? is a game of nonverbal language that can help teach kids to learn to be aware of and interpret their body language and the body language of others.

If you're familiar with Apples to Apples, it plays the same: One player chooses a situation card and the other players choose a body language card from their hand that they feel best represents a person in that situation. Here are examples of situation cards:

• Your class is going on a field trip to the art museum. What does your body look like?
• Someone just gave you the exact present you wanted. What does your body look like?
• You have a toothache. What does your body look like?
• The teacher said you had to stay after class. What does your body look like?

Here are some examples of the body expression cards:

There are two identical sets of the same 30 body language cards, 60 total. Each card has a small star with a number in it in the bottom right hand corner.

The game board has 46 spaces from start to finish. There are three different types of spaces on the board:

• Blue spaces - These spaces will give movement directions: Move forward 1 space, move backward 3 spaces, move forward 4 spaces, roll again or lose a turn.
• Orange spaces - These spaces show the outline of a body and when you land here you will pick a situation card (see instructions below).
• Yellow spaces - These spaces will have questions and you will have to act out the answer. Examples - What does your body look like when you meet someone new? What does your body look like when you are angry? What does your body look like when you are frustrated?

What Did You Say? includes instructions for playing with two people and for playing with three to six people.

Object:
The first person to get to the finish space wins 5 chips and ends the game. All players count their chips and the player with the most chips is the winner.

Set up:
Place the board between the players. Shuffle the situation cards and place them nearby in a face-down stack. Shuffle the body language cards and give 5 to each player. If a player gets two of the same cards, he places one at the bottom of the pile and takes the top card. Each player should have 5 different cards in their hand. Each player chooses one pawn and puts it on the start space on the board.
 
Play for 3-6 players:
Player take turns. Throw the die, move your pawn that many spaces forward, and follow the directions on that space. If you land on the orange space, choose a situation card and read it aloud. Each player looks at the cards in their hand and then chooses a body language card that they feel best represents a person in that situation and places it face-down in the middle of the table. When they are all in, the person who read the card turns them over and decides which one he thinks best matches the situation. The person who put out that card gets 2 chips. Those cards are collected and returned to the bottom of the body language card pile and each player takes one card from the top of that pile and adds it to their hand.

Play until someone reaches the finish line. Players count their chips and the one with the most chips wins the game.

Play for 2 players:
Follow the instructions for set-up above. Players take turns. Play as above when landing on yellow or blue squares. When a player lands on an orange square, he reads the question aloud. The other player looks at his body language cards and secretly writes down the number of the card he feels is the best match. He then places all his body language cards face up on the table. The initial player now writes on his paper the number that he feels the second player picked. The players show each other their numbers. If they match, the first player gets three chips and the second player gets two chips. If they don't match, no one gets any chips. Play until someone reaches the finish space. He gets five chips and each player totals the number of chips they have collected. The one with the most chips is the winner.

Try this:

• Skip the game. Present one card at a time. Ask the individual to imitate the person on the card. Ask the player to tell you what the person is thinking about, or what happened right before the picture was taken, or what will happen right after the picture is taken, etc.
• Skip the game. Choose a body card and ask the player to determine what the person on the card is feeling. Now ask the individual to model how their would look if they felt the same way. Use a mirror and let the individual see their facial expression, body position etc. Does it match the image on the card?
• Talk about the face. Talk about how expressive the mouth, eyes, eyebrows, are. Find some expressive pictures on google images and compare the features. Look at lots of them so they become familiar.
• Us the online Make Belief Comix generator. Make two panel comics. In the first panel set up a situation and in the second panel have a character react, without words. Let the player guess what the reaction is by reading the body language. This site has multiple characters and each character may have several different expressions. I have used this site a lot over the years.
• Take the opportunity to talk about how different people may respond differently to the same situation when different images come up on a turn during the game. In the example of going to a museum (above), one person may love the idea and another person may hate it. 
• Play a memory match game with the two sets of body language cards. Each time a person matches a set, ask them what the person on the card might be thinking, or what would make them feel that way.
• Place one of each card on the table face-up. Tell a story where a person may have mixed emotions and ask the player to pick up at least two cards that would describe how they would feel in that situation. For example: Your sister just graduated from high school and during the graduation party she announces she will move away to go to college. You feel happy and sad at the same time.

In the box: 60 body language cards (2 of each posture), 48 situation cards, 2 dice, 6 pawns, 100 chips, crayons, sheets

If you are interested in purchasing this game you can go to the ChildsWork ChildsPlay website by clicking here.