Danielle:
This is also a great question for the ACEs in Education community as well since many in that community are working with schools and kids of all ages. Also, you might be interested in the Maine Building Resiliency Network which is doing amazing work across Maine.
On a personal note, a friend and I did an interactive exhibit on ACEs and trauma as a way to make the material a bit more engaging as it's so often framed through a clinical lens. One exercise that we did that we got a lot of good feedback on from all ages was to bring in 10 hula hoops.
We asked people to take the ACE test as themselves or maybe guessing the scores a parent, student, lover or friend had (and never needing to tell us) and then to "wear" that number of hula hoops. We'd ask them to try to tie a sneaker or pull out their cell phone and text holding one or five or ten hula hoops. Then we said, now imagine holding one, or five or ten while showering or getting dressed or in a classroom or at a desk. We'd talk about the way people and our bodies get shaped around ACEs and carrying that toxic stress. It was actually more impactful for people with low ACE scores than high ACE scores.
People with PTSD said their partners got it in a way that they never had. Teachers said it helped them understand and think more about kids, that their students are carrying these invisible hula hoops, and it's impacting social life, physical movement, and range of motion. Again, we aren't therapists, we were two people with a high and a low ACE score who didn't believe the ACE study at first and were trying to share and explain it in ways that people would interact with.
Using 10 oranges does the same thing as well and are easier to carry around 
and now that I've learned more about the adverse community experiences and how structural racism impacts people, I'd show those in ways like how adverse community experiences are the weather. Like imagine carrying one, two or ten hoops and it's raining or snowing or one has no coat as a way to show buffering (or no buffering) and imagine carrying one, two or ten, while hungry or by adding more hula hoops for the other ACEs not in the original study.
Finally, to show the hopeful part and how resilience is really the community we noted how, if one or two or three or more people are present and can help carry a hula hoop, help navigate while one has to wear the hula hoops, can come inside the hula hoop so it's not as much of a barrier, can help hold a hula hoop so one can have more range of motion for a while, etc. that can also show the buffering of bonding and attachment.
Please write how the day goes and reach out if I can be of any support. I work at ACEs Connection and support ACEs initiatives in the Northeast. Cissy
