The best board games for girls and boys under 10

There are people who don’t like them, either because they are not fascinated by competition, or because they find it difficult to learn and follow the rules, or because they simply hate it. have fun. But many people, and more and more, as the growing sales of this industry show, love board games.

For adults, they work as a good excuse to meet, entertain and challenge each other on equal footing – as long as, as Kipling said, you can face success and defeat, these two impostors, of the same way – which also applies to adults, children, to whom games can also bring other learning and benefits.

To begin with, “it allows them to look at each other face to face and reconnect with the game, which is an integral part of our species”, explains María Cristina Sierra, psychologist and co-founder of School toy libraries a project responsible for reviewing, selecting and classifying board games, much like a library does, and then arranging them in schools and colleges throughout most of Chile.

A team of teachers and psychologists analyzed more than a thousand titles from 2019 to present, among which they chose hundreds of board games that, in one way or another, can contribute to the educational program, particularly in the areas of inclusion, personal life development, school coexistence and civic education.

There are already 42 schools in ten regions of the country, between Copiapó and Chiloé, which have one or more of these toy libraries, each with around 180 different games. “We have seen a positive impact on the personality and development of children and adolescents, which also improves the teaching conditions for teachers, who also play, creating a virtuous circle in the training process,” says Sierra.

Another thing they want to combat is the ability to screen children: according to the Chilean Society of Pediatrics, children in the country spend almost 6 hours a day in front of a digital device. A problem to which no limits have been set, which has worsened during the pandemic, and which is reflected in a decrease in physical play in boys and girls, an increase in anxiety and greater difficulty in coping frustration and difference.

“Board games help get them out of there,” says the psychologist. “Play strengthens peer bonds, happiness levels increase, readiness to learn and school violence are reduced.”

Since there is surely no one in Chile who has tried and verified the level of children’s board games available in the country better than the school games people, we asked them to choose the ten best titles to play with girls and boys under age. ten years old.

For those looking for a birthday present, a Children’s Day gift, or just an excuse to have a good time with their kids, this list — which has no pecking order — won’t disappoint.

This game of French origin, now a classic in the gaming world, in addition to being fun, contributes a lot to “developing empathy, socio-emotional language, fantasy and creativity”, explains Sierra. Its dynamic is based on cards with symbolic and surreal images, and those who advance positions on the board are those who manage to understand what these cards cause in others.

“Dixit is a favorite in schools, mainly because of the aesthetic, which quickly invites you to be part of the experience.” It can be played competitively or using just the cards, whose striking images can spark conversations about feelings, imaginations and ideas.

On the other side of the radar, less contemplative and much more active, is this title created by the enigmatic Luxembourger Jacques Zeimet, an intense reaction game where each participant tries to be the fastest to identify and grab one of the five characters placed on the tableau, as shown on the corresponding card.

“In schools we play it from the age of 6, and it develops concentration, executive functions and healthy competition,” explains the psychologist. The Phantom Blitz cannot be missing in toy libraries, he says, because the skill that is most diminished by excess screens is concentration, “and here you can’t win if you’re not focused. “. Very entertaining for everyone, it is also useful for children with attention deficit or delayed inhibitory control. “This generation is very impulsive and this game helps to control those impulses, to think before you act, a learning process which, at the age of seven, can be very important.

Besides being nimble and fun, this game also has the hook of including characters from 31 minutes, always very popular with girls and boys. Sierra defines it as a social game, that is, a collaborative title where the main objective, more than winning, is that everyone has a good time, even if it remains “a demanding experience of concentration, effective communication with others, visual and motor agility, and self-control”. They usually use it as an end-of-class or activity prize, “because it’s crazy, a party “.

Another collaborative game, although more complex and less festive, is The mind, a title highly rewarded around the world, whose principle is to communicate without speaking. “The objective is to order a numerical sequence between all the players, but without saying a word.” This may seem like a very fanciful limitation, but it always results in a great collective moment. “You have to use the five senses, look for strategies, work as a team,” explains Sierra. “And silence is valued, so rare today, allowing us to observe ourselves and do different things.”

For those nostalgic for memory, this is a game that relies on the same skill – quickly recalling different images and concepts – but with different challenges. It’s for ages three and up and it’s a box that has lots of cards, which are only displayed for 30 seconds and then you have to answer a question that comes on the back. “There are Brain Boxes on different topics, like geography or animals,” Sierra explains. “It’s a game that, in addition to being stimulating, generates specific learning and gives value to knowledge.”

“Children, whether we like it or not, love to talk about poo,” admits the co-founder of the School Toy Library. And this hilarious game takes advantage of this innocent taboo as its central theme: the objective is to find out which of the pets was made on the mat, but the dynamic encourages concentration, memory, collaboration and teamwork. . “It’s a little hard to memorize,” he says, “but as part of a really fun concept, everyone really gets into it.”

This is a simple but fantastic dice game which, depending on the results of the roll, builds stories. “It’s a great game,” Sierra defines it, “because it appeals to the most complex human ability: creativity.” It works great as a catalyst for telling stories that are simple and safe, but also complex and whimsical, excellent for expressing emotions and fostering the imagination.

“It works for everyone in a school community, from non-readers to teachers. It is a must in all our toy libraries, in particular because it compensates for this loss of oral tradition, our ability to tell spoken stories”, something that technology has undermined. “And when it’s lost, culture is lost.”

Inspired by the popular story of the same name, this game allows children from 4 years old to talk about and recognize their own emotions, identify tools to manage them and observe other common experiences in terms of feelings. “We played this one with accompaniment,” Sierra explains. “And with him, it’s normal for children to reveal certain situations, when they feel sad, what they are afraid of.” It’s not just negative emotions, that’s for sure: there’s also joy and it can be a game that’s as fun as it is profound.

A lion, named Leo, has a very long mane and wants to cut it at the jungle barbershop, which will be closing in a few hours. His personality, very sociable and expressive, leads him to stay in conversation with the other animals of the jungle, at the risk of falling behind.

“So the players have to work together to help Leo get to the hairdresser before it closes,” explains the psychologist. “You have to create a strategy to know which animal to talk to, which ones it is better to avoid so as not to waste time and which direction to take.” It is played as a team, a dynamic that serves to verify that children can sometimes be more collaborative than adults.

Designed for children aged four or five —the age at which they are usually fascinated by labyrinths—, it is precisely a puzzle that is both spatial and invisible: it is played with magnetic tiles and the limits are below the tray and is not seen. If you go through a blocked side, you have to go back to the beginning, so it requires a lot of memory and observation skills.

“It’s very difficult, it’s also going to take a lot of luck, but it encourages perseverance and, when you succeed, it’s very rewarding”, summarizes Sierra.

*Prices for products in this item are updated as of July 13, 2023. Values ​​and availability may change.