9 Feelings and Emotions Board Games for Primary School and Home

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I wanted to list emotion board games for children age 6+, as my previous post on games about emotions was about preschoolers and kindergarten aged children.  

What are primary school feelings and emotions board games for? These 9 emotion board games help primary school children handle complex emotions and learn basic strategies to deal with difficult emotions.

If you are interested in games that are designed to cope with a specific emotion (anger for example), or in emotion card games rather than board games, please jump to the end of this post where I elaborate about these games.

Emotion Board Games Comparison Table

I am happy to recommend the following 9 emotion board games.

Game	Age	Players	Price	For	Type	Rating
Feelings Fair	6‑10	2‑6	$$$$	T, C, Th	Board	★★★☆☆
Seek Four	6+	2‑8	$$	F	Board	★★★★★
Express It	8-15	4‑12	$$$$	C, Th	Board	★★★★☆
Feeling Good	9+	2‑4	$$$$	C, Th	Board	★★★★☆
Mixed emotions	8+	2-10	$$$	F, T, C, Th	Board	★★★★★
Expressionary!	12‑17	4‑12	$$$$	T, Th	Board	★★★★☆
Talk about Feelings	5‑10	3‑6	$$$	T	Bingo	★★★☆☆
Faces and Feelings	5‑10	1‑2	$$	T, F	Bingo	★★★★★
Emotional Bingo for Teens	12‑18	4‑12	$$$	T	Bingo	★★★★☆

Where:
For: F (Families) / T (Teachers) / C (Counselors) / Th (Therapists)

Feelings & Emotions Board Games

Feelings Fair (Franklin Learning Systems)

★★★☆☆

Players: 2-6 | Age: 6-10 | For therapists, teachers, counselors

Feelings Fair helps children:

• Express feelings through “act out or describe” cards
• Recognize feelings in others being acted out or through “Guess My Feeling” cards. For example, a player may appear angry at another player, while he/she is frustrated by something else that has nothing to do with the other children.
• Handle situations that involve strong or negative feelings, such as jealousy or anger, through cards that ask to solve problems involving feelings, and the rides in the fair that represent different strategies (Listening Fun House, Cool Down Water Slide, Talk It Out Tilt-a-Whirl…)

I recommend Feelings Fair because I love the fair atmosphere that was chosen and the idea of rides that represent different coping strategies. This is an intelligent way to use this theme in a pertinent way.

Seek Four – Nutty game of expressions (Chalk & Chuckles)

★★★★★

Players: 2-8 | Age: 6+ | For families

I highly recommend Seek Four as it can be played with players of different ages, which makes it a great family game. There are a variety of ways for players to express themselves and the game can be played in more than one way. The set consists of:

• 32 emotion cards, 4 reference cards
• 4 colored scarves
• A wooden die, pad, pencil
• Mirror to check facial expressions

Seek Four also has simple rules. Each player wears a scarf and tries to gather 4 cards of the same color by rolling a die. The die offers six ways of describing an emotion to other players (tell a story, draw, act out…) to help them guess the emotion card he/she is looking for.

The first player to collect all four cards is the winner.

What I really like about this game is that it can be played in so many different ways. For example, the players can simply swap cards until they get 4 of the same color. Then they act out the emotions on their cards for the other players to guess.

Express It (Creative Therapy)

★★★★☆

Players: 4-12 | Age: 8-15 | For counselors, therapists, clinical social workers
Author: Marjorie Mitlin

I recommend Express It to address difficult topics such as depression, drugs, alcohol. or eating habits with teenage children. The best feature is that the children explore difficult emotions in a playful and safe way – by drawing a picture, using pantomime or descriptive words.

The set contains two sets of cards, a spinner, a timer, score sheets, and sketch pads.

The Rule is simple: a player spins the spinner, picks a card from a deck and tries to explain what it says to his or her team. Points are awarded for a successful explanation, and then the other team takes a turn at the spinner. Although the players score points and there is a timer, this is really not a competitive game.

Express It plays similarly to Charades and it is best played in teams, so I highly recommend it for group settings.

When playing with younger children, you should take out the teen cards.

Feeling Good (Creative Therapy)

★★★★☆

Players: 2-4 or groups | Age: 9+ | For counselors, therapists
Author: Crystal Barber

Feeling Good comprises two types of cards:

• “doing cards” help express feelings in a safe way – through role-play or a drawing. For example, one of the “doing cards” invites to imitate another player and then they swap the roles. Afterward, the players discuss their feelings about how others see them.
• “feeling cards” help have positive thoughts and recognize what makes the player feel bad. For example, “When you’re nervous or scared, what kind of things do you say to yourself? How does what you say affect how you feel?”

I really like the way the board is illustrated – there are pictures of a tree and a house that will make the child feel safe. At the finishing line, the child is even greeted with “Welcome to the safe house”.

Although this game is intended for counseling sessions, you can play it at home too and with any child to help him/her build confidence and think positive thoughts (it is a bit expensive though for home use).

Mixed Emotions (Golden Path Games)

★★★★★

Age 8+ (including teens & adults) | 2 to 20 players (up to 10 is best)
For therapists, teachers, parents, counselors

I highly recommend Mixed Emotions. If you are looking for a game that explores complex emotions, Mixed Emotions is perfect for you. It will help players:

• Recognize mixed emotions in themselves
• Accept that it is OK to feel more than one emotion at the same time or even feel contradictory emotions (like happiness and sadness).

Mixed Emotions comprises a thick board with 100 emotions, 60 chips, 90 emotions cards, each describing a life event that evokes mixed emotions. The cards come in 3 age groups: child, adult, and teen. They encourage children and teens to put themselves in the shoes of an adult and to empathize with difficult choices that parents sometimes need to make, and vice versa:

• Child card example: “Max just got back from a visit with his father and stepmother. His mother asks him lots of questions about his father’s house.”
• Adult card example: “Eva has the day off and she invites her son to go to a movie. But he says he would rather play on the computer.”

Mixed emotions is easy to use and you may use it in a variety of ways. For example, you can decide not to use the cards at all. Just ask the players to place chips on the words that best describe how they feel right now.

It can be especially useful for teens that tend to shut their parents out and are confused about their feelings.

Expressionary! (Childswork / Childsplay)

★★★★☆

Players: 4-12 | Age: 12-17 | For therapists, teachers
Author: Amanda L. Gissel

In Expressionary!, players describe feelings (from the 40 feelings cards) in various ways (words, pantomime or a movement to describe that emotion) and state the situations that cause them (through the 40 situation cards).

The first player who guesses the feeling/emotion being expressed wins a chip. The player with the most chips, in the end, is the winner. The game is easy to set up and the board is beautiful. I recommend Expressionary! for its simplicity and nice design.

Contents: game board, 40 feelings cards, 40 situation cards, chips, 8 place markers, one-minute timer.

Bingo & Lotto Feelings & Emotions Games

Talk about Feelings Bingo Game (The Berenstain Bears)

★★★☆☆

Players: 3-16 | Age: 5-10 | For teachers

Talk about feelings is a standard bingo (16 Bingo cards), except that the card used to call the bingo numbers feature questions that the child who matches the number must answer before he/she puts down a chip. These questions aim at talking about or expressing feelings, understanding how others feel, staying positive – children are encouraged to talk about difficult feelings and to come up with strategies for coping with such feelings. 

Faces and Feelings Listening Lotto (Key Education)

★★★★★

Players: 1-12 | Age: 4-11 | For teachers, parents, counselors

I highly recommend Faces and Feelings which includes 12 cards (8 photos of faces with different expressions per card), 120 tokens, and an audio CD.

Children listen to a narrative statement from the audio CD and place a token on the face that they think best matches what they hear. This helps children identify feelings through facial expressions and is also great for developing listening skills.

What I really like about Faces and Feelings are the boards that show faces of real children. Their facial expressions are very clear and easy to discern, something that many facial expression games fail to portray well. Also, the CD adds another dimension compared to most lotto games.

Emotional Bingo for Teens (Creative Therapy Store)

★★★★☆

Players: 4-12 |Age: 12-18 | For teachers
Author: Marjorie Mitlin
Contents: poster (20″ x 28″), 32 bingo cards, 34 emotion cards, 300 chips

Emotional Bingo for Teens is best suited for classrooms. It is a standard Bingo with a twist. When a player draws an emotion card, the player who first finds that emotion on their Bingo card shares with the group an experience involving that emotion, and is rewarded for that as well as the players who give an empathetic response to his/her story.

The guide goes beyond the rule with useful points on why empathy is important and valuable counseling suggestions.

The cards feature funny black & white illustrations. The words used to express feelings such as “freaked out”, “out of it”, “grossed out” will certainly appeal to teens.

Emotional Bingo for Teens is well suited for bilingual groups, as parts come in both English and Spanish.

Remark: there is also a version for young children.

Other Types of Feelings & Emotions Games:

Check my post “30+ Games About Emotions For Preschoolers And Kindergarten” for games about emotions for younger children, or if you are interested in emotion cards games. Many of these games are of course great for primary school children.

If you are more interested in coping with emotions or managing emotions, you might want to read my posts about Anger Management Board Games and Anger Management Card Games, Conflict resolution board games and Conflict resolution card games.

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