Hello.  My name is Brittany Thompson.  And I am a Chocoholic.  There.  I said it!  Chocolate could definitely be described as a weakness of mine.  I have been known to stock up on those amazing chocolate covered caramel macadamia nut clusters from Costco because, let’s face it, running out would be a tragedy!  I was definitely one of those children who, at Halloween, would trade my younger brother and sister Smarties and Dum Dums for their chocolate candy (Rude, I know.).  At least until they caught on that the chocolates were the best.  So in light of my love for chocolate, I decided to post one of my favorite games:

The Hershey Bar Game!

All you need for this game is:

• A Giant Hershey Bar (Or Symphony Bar or now they have huge crunch bars…anything with a paper/foil cover will work!)
• Two oven mitts
• Wrapping paper or newspaper
• Plastic Fork and Knife
• Three Dice

To prepare, you will need to wrap the candy bar in as many layers of wrapping paper as you can muster.  Have everyone sit in a circle surrounding the candy bar.  On “Go” the first person will role the dice and the dice will go around the circle with everyone taking a chance to roll.  When you get doubles, it is your turn to try and open the candy bar.  You must first put on both the oven mitts, grab the fork and knife, and go for the gold!  Once someone else rolls doubles, you must pass all the tools to them and let them go after the candy.  Once you finally break through, it is a fight for each morsel of chocolate because you can only eat until someone else gets doubles, then you have to pass it along!

We just played this game the other night and it was a blast.  Everyone was rolling the dice as fast as they could to try and get to the candy bar.  We were laughing so hard, especially when someone just managed to put on their gloves, when their neighbor rolled doubles and they had to hurry and pass them over!

So What?  This game is so fun for family night, a family reunion, or even a teens birthday party.  I used this game in therapy when I was working as a Recreational Therapist.  It really helped everyone relax and step out of their comfort zone without even realizing it.  Once we finished the game, we would talk about what the gloves could represent in their own life.  Something that slowed them down from getting what they wanted like drugs or alcohol.  In a family setting, you could use this game to discuss how anger can act like the gloves when we are trying to accomplish something as a family.  It gets in our way so that we don’t work together as well.  If we could just take our gloves/anger out of the picture, we can get to our sweet reward much quicker!