Feelings Mancala

The game of Mancala has been played for over 1,000 years, with its origins in Africa and the Middle East. It is a game of strategy and cognitive processing. I have also made it into a game of emotional development.

“Feelings Mancala” is played with the same rules as traditional Mancala (click here to read the game rules). However, in “Feelings Mancala”, each player is expected to share a time they felt a particular feeling/emotion during each of their turns. During each players turn, they will place their beans in the “holes”, continuing around the game board, until  the player’s last bean has been placed in an empty “hole”, their turn is complete and must express a time they felt the emotion being described by the sticker at the bottom of the hole.

For the stickers, I struggled to find emoji stickers where I live, so I purchased face stickers from Hobby Lobby with various faces and colors. I sorted the stickers to correspond to an emotion, choosing emotions children ages 6 to 18 would be able to understand on their own or understand with further guidance and explanation. Once the stickers were sorted and each emotion had been identified, I placed the stickers variously around the game board, one in each “hole” of the board. I used Modge Podge to ensure the stickers remained in placed. Once the Modge Podge was dry, “Feelings Mancala” was open and ready for emotion education!

This has been such an instrumental tool in my practice as a play therapist. It allows me to begin conversations regarding emotions without being invasive. This games allows children to choose a time they felt an emotion, which in turn allows you, as a therapist, to develop a better understanding of the areas in their life they are currently comfortable expressing.This game allows children to develop an understanding of “it’s okay to talk about how we feel”.

I will often use this activity within the first two to three sessions with children, and continue to utilize this game throughout the therapeutic relationship to better gauge the child’s developed comfort level, as well as to assess if their ability to express a wider range of emotions has developed at an age appropriate level.