Therapeutic and educational stories for the sandtray.
The Moving Stories Method integrates story, sandtray and play therapy. The stories are told with the aid of a Moving Stories kit and a sandtray as the “theater”. Moving Stories kits are baskets or decorated boxes that contain the characters and props that are used to tell the story. Together they make up a three dimensional therapeutic library.
Moving Stories: Volume I
Stories can be ordered through PayPal. You will receive your stories by e-mail. Click on the titles for story descriptions and prices.
- Telling Therapeutic Moving Stories in the Sandtray (Free Article)
- The Moving Stories Method Moving Stories Method
- Resiliency/Trauma/Loss: The Giant
- Accepting Help/Relax/Letting Go: Swimming Eagle
- Missing Someone: Where’s Stripes? Where are you? The Flower
- Diversity: Circle of Bunnies
- Affect Regulation: Claude Flies an Airplane
- Sibling Rivalry: I Love You
- Grief and Loss: Forever Home
- Bullying: Wolf Gets Skunked
- Safety and Security: Sammy Squirrel
- Being Yourself: Johnny Appleseed
- Depression: Black Black Bear
- Growth and Transformation: Emerging
Book Chapters on the Moving Stories Method
Creative Interventions with Traumatized Children edited by Cathy Malchiodi includes many creative therapy approaches for working with traumatized children including a chapter on Moving stories:
Chapter 7: Therapeutic Stories and Play in the Sandtdray for Traumatized Children: The Moving Stories Method (Duffy)
To order: Guilford Press
“The Use of Creative Therapies in Treating Depression” edited by Stephanie L. Brooke and Charles Edwin Myers (2015) examines creative approaches to the treatment of depression, including a chapter on the Moving Stories method by Dr. Sue Carroll Duffy:
Chapter 7: The Moving Stories Method in Groups for Depressed Children: Integrating Story, Play and Sand Tray Therapies (Duffy)
To Order: Charles C. Thomas Publisher
“Trauma-Responsive Schooling: Centering Student Voice and Healing” by Lyn Mikel Brown, Cattharine Biddle, and Mark Tappan.
Chapter 4: Stories in the Sand explores the use of Moving Stories method in the classroom setting.
To Order: Harvard Education Press
Picture Book
Finding Diamonds
Author: Sue Carroll Duffy Illustrator: J. Woodruff Carroll
If you find a giant diamond are you as valuable as a giant diamond? A young boy hopes so. While the rest of his family sleeps, he and his dog Joy begin his giant diamond rock hunt along the rural Maine coast. His curious mind, nature and the power of loving relationships lead the way to his most important discovery–
This book helps parents, teachers and therapists initiate conversations about feelings related to common experiences such as struggles in school, self-esteem, loss, wanting to feel important and comparing oneself to a sibling. For children, it is a soothing walk through the woods, filled with discovery, hope, and love.
Great to see your work. Your story boxes are ingenious!
Sherry Reiter
Director of The Creative Righting Center
Awesome tool for sand tray. I write a lot of my own stories, copy using color ink and then put them into individual binders for children. Now I will make story boxes for certain stories and then use the printed story to read to the client or ask the client to read it. I will ask the client to act out the story in the sand tray. Thanks for this creative way to use the sand tray!
Melissa, Child Therapist
These are amazing!
Sue- this is great! Want to come to NH and deliver a workshop???
-Katherine