Games for 8 Year Olds
By eight, children can reflect on their own thinking. They can look back at something that happened last week and say why they reacted the way they did, which is a genuinely different skill from describing what happened.
That opens up games about past and future, choices and consequences, and it is why the games for this age run longer and ask more.
Our games for 8 year olds
CBTrip Board Game
An illustrated board game where the pictures do the asking. Children respond to what they see, vote on each other's answers, and end up explaining themselves without being interrogated.
CBTime Board Game
A board divided into past, present and future. Where a child lands decides what they are asked. Children who cannot answer "how are you feeling?" can often answer "what is something you did last year that you are proud of?"
CBTrail Board Game
A board game about noticing what you think, how you feel and what you do next. The questions are the game: they give children a reason to talk about confidence, worry and pride without being asked to sit down and discuss their feelings.
CBTrees Board Game
The forest needs replanting and the player who plants the most trees wins. Planting means answering a question first, so a child playing to win is concentrating on the game, not on the fact they are talking about how they feel.
What changes at eight
Eight year olds can hold a thought about why they reacted a certain way, and they appreciate being treated as capable of that.
They can also consider someone else's answer properly. CBTrip builds a voting step into every turn for this reason: deciding which answer you agree with means thinking about another person's reasoning.
Time becomes a usable idea. CBTime divides the board into past, present and future, which lets a child answer "what is something you did last year that you are proud of?" when "how are you feeling?" would get nothing.
Board games for 8 year olds
This is the age for the longer boards. Thirty to fifty minutes is comfortable, and a child will happily play a second round.
Mixed reading levels stop being a barrier. CBTrip leads with illustrations rather than text, so it works in groups where some children read confidently and some do not.
With 130 cards in CBTrip and 80 in CBTime, it takes a long time before anything repeats, which matters if the game is going to come out more than twice.
What to expect
Thirty to fifty minutes per game.
This is the age where the adult often gets as much out of the conversation as the child does.
Answers that surprise you. An eight year old asked a good question in the middle of a game will tell you things that would never come up directly.
More guides
Every guide in this series: 3 year olds, 4 year olds, 5 year olds, 6 year olds, 7 year olds, 8 year olds.