What did the house you grew up in smell like?
When you walked in the front door, it smelled like ______________________
Free printable kit
Print it, cut it up, put it on the table.
Best on card stock. Two cards to a page, large type, sentence starter on every one. The facilitation guide below prints last, so you can keep it or bin it.
How to run it
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Everyone gets the same question
Read it out loud rather than passing the card around. Hearing a question and reading one are different experiences, and the spoken version works better.
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Give it a beat before anyone answers
The silence after a good question is not a failure. It is the memory arriving. Count to five before filling it.
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If someone freezes, offer the starter
The italic line on each card is the first few words of the answer. Read it to them and let them finish the sentence. This rescues almost every stall.
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Follow the story, not the deck
If one answer opens up three more, abandon the card. Getting through the pile is not the point and never was.
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Ask if you can record the good one
Sooner or later someone tells a story the room has never heard. That is the moment to ask whether you can keep it.
For care settings
- Keep sessions short. Twenty minutes is usually more than enough.
- Start in “where you come from” — it asks the least of anyone.
- Leave “messages for later” until the person is warmed up, or skip it entirely.
- A resident who only listens is still participating. Do not press.
- If a question lands badly, move on without remarking on it.
The cards
41 cards. The italic line is the sentence starter.
What was your first job, and what did it teach you about people?
My first job was ______________________
Who else lived on your street? What were they like?
Two doors down there was ______________________
What is something you did as a kid that you never got caught for?
Nobody ever found out that I ______________________
What did Sundays look like when you were young?
Sunday mornings we always ______________________
What did you want to be when you grew up, and what happened to that?
For a long time I was sure I would be ______________________
Did your family have enough? How did you know?
I figured out where we stood when ______________________
What do you remember about your grandparents that nobody else would know?
Something people never knew about my grandmother is ______________________
Who believed in you before you believed in yourself?
Before I could see it in myself, ______________________
What was your mother or father like before they were a parent?
Before I came along, my father was the kind of person who ______________________
Who did you lose touch with that you still think about?
I still wonder what happened to ______________________
Who was hard to love, and what did loving them anyway teach you?
It was never simple with ______________________
Who made you laugh harder than anyone?
Nobody could make me laugh like ______________________
Where did your name come from?
I was named after ______________________
What decision changed the direction of your life?
Everything would have gone differently if I had not ______________________
Tell me about a time you moved. What did you leave behind?
The day we left, the hardest thing to leave was ______________________
How did you meet the person you spent your life with?
The first time I saw them, ______________________
What did you think about in the first hour after your child was born?
Holding them for the first time, what went through my head was ______________________
When were you most afraid, and how did you get through it?
The most frightened I have ever been was ______________________
What did you build or finish that you were proud of?
It took longer than it should have, but I ______________________
What did you once believe strongly that you no longer believe?
I used to be certain that ______________________
What advice did someone give you that turned out to be right?
Someone once told me ______________________
What mistake taught you the most?
The thing I got most wrong was ______________________
What do you know about money that you wish you had known at twenty?
What nobody explains about money is ______________________
What did all those years of work actually teach you?
After all that time, what I learned was ______________________
What did you forgive, and how long did it take?
It took me years to let go of ______________________
What do people worry about that turns out not to matter?
People spend so much time worrying about ______________________
What got you through the hardest year of your life?
What kept me upright that year was ______________________
What did an ordinary evening look like, in a year when you were happy?
A normal night back then looked like ______________________
What was the sound of their laugh?
When something really got them, they would ______________________
What did you two argue about, and how did it usually end?
We could go round and round about ______________________
What did you cook for people you loved? How did you make it?
The one thing everyone asked me to make was ______________________
What small thing did they always do that you would know anywhere?
They always ______________________
What song puts you back somewhere specific?
Whenever I hear ______________________
What do you miss that you never expected to miss?
The thing I did not expect to miss was ______________________
What would you want to say to them on a day when everything goes wrong?
If you are having one of those days, I want you to know ______________________
What would you say to them the morning they get married?
On your wedding day, what I would tell you is ______________________
What do you want them to know the first time they become a parent?
When you are holding your own child for the first time, remember ______________________
What are you proud of them for, that you have never said plainly?
I have never said this out loud, but I am proud of you for ______________________
What would you want them to hear when they doubt themselves?
When you start to think you are not enough, remember that ______________________
Is there anything you would want to apologise for?
I want to say sorry for ______________________