11 Ways to Use Figures in Play Therapy
Small toys, big breakthroughs. If you've ever watched a kid quietly rearrange a handful of tiny people on your office rug and reveal more in five minutes than an hour of direct questions ever could, you already know why figures earn a permanent spot in a play therapy toolbox. They're cheap, they're portable, and they let a child show you something before they're ready to say it.
If you're stocking up, the Playkidiz 20-Piece Kids Figures Set is a solid, budget-friendly option worth a look. It's a bin of 20 durable, non-toxic figures depicting community helpers and everyday people — firefighters and police officers among them — with bright colors and smooth, rounded shapes that hold up to being dropped, chewed on, and flung across a sand tray. It's rated for kids 18 months and up, which in practice means it works for toddlers through upper elementary without needing a second set for "older kids." Because the figures represent ordinary roles rather than licensed characters, they stay open-ended — a firefighter can be a firefighter, a dad, a bully, or a future self, depending entirely on what the child needs that day.
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11 Ways to Use Figures in School Counseling
11 practical ways school counselors and child therapists can use toy figures in play therapy—feelings check-ins, family sculpting, trauma processing, and more.
Gina R
9/6/20265 min read
I prefer a super simple set like this one so the play can be more open-ended.
Here are 11 ways to put a set like this to work in session.
1. The "Pick One That's You Today" Icebreaker
Spread the figures out and ask a simple question: "Which one feels most like you right now?" There's no personality quiz to get right — the choosing is the point. How a child sorts through the pile before landing on one often tells you as much as whatever they say afterward.
It's a low-stakes way to open a session with a new or nonverbal client, and it doubles as a quick check-in ritual for returning clients. Ask the same question three sessions in a row and watch whether the answer — or the way they answer — starts to shift.
2. Feelings Check-Ins Without the Feelings Chart
Some kids clam up the second you ask them to name an emotion out loud. Handing over the bin and asking them to show you instead — "which one's the mad one today, which one's the happy one" — takes the pressure off language and turns an abstract question into something hands-on.
Over time, you can build a shared shorthand: "the yellow guy" becomes your client's go-to symbol for frustration, and suddenly they have a way to flag a feeling in session without needing the vocabulary for it yet.
3. Family Sculpting, Minus the Loaded Symbolism
Neutral figures work well for mapping family relationships precisely because they aren't already "mom" or "dad" in the box. Let the child assign roles themselves, then pay attention to placement — who's standing close, who's turned away, who's bigger, who got left out entirely.
This is especially useful with divorce, blended families, or custody transitions, where a child may be sorting through loyalty conflicts they can't yet articulate directly. The figures give them a way to arrange the family system spatially instead of verbally, which is often easier and safer.
4. Meeting the Uniforms Before They're Scary
Because this particular set includes firefighter and police figures, it's handy for gentle desensitization work. A child who's frightened of sirens, or who's had a hard experience involving first responders (a house fire, an ambulance ride, a parent's arrest), can meet a miniature, low-stakes version of that figure first.
Let the child control the interaction entirely — have the helper figure knock, wave, or "check in" without anything scary happening. Repeated, child-led exposure like this can take some of the charge out of real-world encounters with those same uniforms.
5. Re-Telling the Hard Moment at a Safe Distance
For processing a difficult event, acting it out with figures often works better than "let's talk about what happened," because it builds in symbolic distance. The child isn't the one it happened to in the story — the figure is — which can make an overwhelming memory more approachable.
This kind of trauma-related work benefits from the training and pacing you'd already bring to it clinically; the figures are simply the vehicle, not a replacement for that judgment. Let the child set the pace and stop the scene whenever they want to.
6. Practicing the Playground Redo
For social skills groups, figures are perfect for reenacting a recess dispute or lunchroom disagreement after the fact. Walk through what happened, then hit pause and try it again with different words or actions. Kids can rehearse the "redo" as many times as they need to, with none of the real embarrassment of getting it wrong in front of actual peers.
This works equally well one-on-one or in a small group, where each student can take a turn steering the scene.
7. A Way to "Talk" Without Talking
For students with selective mutism, or who are simply too anxious to speak directly to an adult, figures can become a stand-in messenger. The child moves a piece to answer a question instead of speaking, which gives them an accessible on-ramp toward eventual verbal engagement rather than forcing it.
This is often less about the figures "fixing" anything and more about lowering the barrier to any communication at all — which, for a very anxious kid, can be the whole session's win.
8. Classroom Guidance on "What Makes Someone a Helper?"
For whole-class SEL lessons, pass a helper figure around the circle and ask each student to share a time someone like it helped them, or a time they were the helper. It's a simple, concrete way to talk about community, trust, and interdependence with kids who aren't ready for an abstract discussion.
Because the set includes a range of everyday roles, not just first responders, you can widen the conversation to include the mail carrier, the school nurse, or the crossing guard — helpers kids see daily but rarely think to name.
9. A Blank Slate for Small-World Building
Dump the whole set out and simply say, "build a world." No prompt, no agenda — just watch. Small-world and sand tray work like this doubles as an informal assessment tool: does the scene stay chaotic, or does it slowly organize over several sessions? Are certain figures always left out, buried, or kept separate from the rest?
You don't need to interpret every placement in the moment. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is take a mental note and let the pattern reveal itself over time.
10. Rehearsing the Next Big Thing
Before a big transition — a new school, a new sibling, a parent's hospital stay, a move — use the figures to walk through what's coming. Build the new classroom, practice the new morning routine, or act out meeting a new baby for the first time.
Rehearsal like this gives a child a preview they can control, which tends to lower anticipatory anxiety a lot more effectively than simply being told what to expect.
11. "Who Do You Want to Help Like?" Identity Work
End on a forward-looking note. Ask a child to pick the figure that reminds them of someone they admire, or the one they'd want to grow up to be. It's a gentle way to touch on self-esteem and possibility, and it works nicely as a closing activity in a termination session — a hopeful note to send a kid out on.
None of this requires fancy equipment — a bin of well-made, open-ended figures is genuinely one of the highest-mileage tools in a counseling office. If your current collection is looking a little sparse (or a little too chewed-on), the Playkidiz 20-Piece Kids Figures Set is an easy, affordable way to restock.
