This past week, classmates and I began to get in depth about the development stages of children and how no child’s development is the same. When having children as patients/clients, it is ESSENTIAL to understand the nooks and crannies of child development and the differences in learning. Our experiential this week is a famous one to use with children; The Scribble Chase.

This is often used with kids because the use of scribbling. The way the technique works is that the art therapist instructs the child to follow their scribble with their marker (the chase). After the child follows the therapist’s scribble on the paper, the child is to find an image or even a series of images within the scribbles. There is an infinite amount of images a child could come up with. Another part to this experiential is to give the found image a back story. For example, in my group, the found images were a turtle and a hand. Our back story was child petting a turtle for the first time. Just from this example and witnessing the experiential in class, I noticed how inviting it is for the child and how easy it is for them to start opening up.

The Scribble Chase is to slightly tap into the subconscious of the child and have them reveal certain parts of their trauma or whatever struggles they be going through. It was even more interesting to see how much fun us art therapy students had doing it with one another! I’m excited to hopefully use this experiential with a future client/patient and have my own fun with it!

Featured Image: [http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/blogs/andrea-mulder-slater-the-art-of-childhood/20150803/5-creative-scribble-games-to-play-with-your-kids]