Teaching Executive functioning skills for kids helps them deal with daily life efficiently. Executive Functioning activities for a family are listed below.
Executive functioning skills definition is primarily defined as those sets of skills that are required for children and adults alike to complete day-to-day activities in an efficient and effective manner.
The skills that fall into executive functions are short-term memory and manipulation, time management, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, among others.
These skills start developing from the first year of children but may take up until early adulthood to be fully developed. Numerous factors including family, upbringing environment, and genetics play vital roles in developing executive functions.
Teaching these skills to children and teenagers can help them develop these skill sets quickly. They can become independent with their skill sets.
The children and teens can also employ their newly acquired skills to make better decisions in their daily life and complete chores and academic tasks efficiently. Kids can also develop new skills based on their executive functioning skill sets.
Teaching Executive Function Skills To Kids Is Essential
Executive functioning skills for kids help them become independent. Such talents also make young kids excellent problem solvers.
Teaching executive functioning skills to kids primarily means making them independent by letting them accomplish their tasks without help or intervention from parents.
Still, it is important to keep the learning attitude alive in kids by helping them when they start to get frustrated.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, executive functioning skills do not have linear growth and do not have a fit-all strategy to help the kids learn these skills. However, during the development phase, there may arise several intervention opportunities for parents.
There are three major categories of executive functioning skills namely inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. They all are learned in different stages of a child’s development and each has its own pace as well.
Executive functioning coaching teaches kids Inhibitory control that helps them control their impulsiveness.
Parents should start teaching Inhibitory control to their kids from a young age, this skill set will help them control their impulsiveness and tantrums and will ease kids in self-control measures.
Working memory or short-term memory is the information retained and manipulated by our brain for a short period of time, that is until the related task is completed. Helping kids with their working memory will enable them to work more efficiently and follow instructions and manipulate information for positive outcomes.
Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to think from a different angle or out-of-the-box thinking. This is a problem-solving skill mostly needed by tweens and teenagers. Cognitive flexibility helps children contemplate a different version of a scenario and choose the optimal one. It’s basically, Dr. Strange thinking in MCU.
Parental intervention is one of the best ways for boosting the executive functioning skills learning process. Several interventions such as computerized intervention, physical intervention, and mindfulness have yielded positive data-backed results in boosting the learning process.
7 Executive Functioning Activities For Kids
Executive functioning activities for kids at home are sports, Cogmed, yoga, and socialization. Kids’ activities improve working memory and cognitive function.
There are different types of activities and tests that help kids learn and develop new skills with sometimes intensive exercise and training. Here are some major types of activities that might come in handy for different types of learning processes.
1. Software Assisted Executive Functioning Activities
Software-assisted interventions like Cogmed, neurofeedback, and Mightier, make a wholesome exercise planned for kids.
They help to develop all kinds of executive functioning skills in children of all ages but especially tweens and teens. These types of tests are sometimes intense and may require multiple hours weekly for 10 to 15 weeks.
Software specially designed to tackle all aspects of executive functioning skills employs different approaches including pictures and puzzles, and complex reasoning problems, among others to help kids develop the necessary skills.
These types of software-assisted activities mainly focus on working memory enhancements and self-control. They also have an impact on cognitive function and help kids and teenagers improve their cognitive abilities.
Some well-known software to help kids with Executive Functioning Activities are:
- Choiceworks: This software lets kids perform activities such as matching the correct image associated with a routine like a bedtime routine to uncover the next task.
- Mindful Powers: This software encourages kids to care for a virtual creature by fulfilling its needs and wants. Kids learn self-control and working memory with this activity.
- Lucidchart: This software is suitable for tweens and teens. This software lets kids represent their thoughts and ideas with diagrams and charts ensuring their expressiveness and workflow idea.
- Time Timer: This software lets kids visualize time with multiple customizable settings. This software is useful to teaching time management to younger kids.
2. Physical Activities
Physical activities are one of the most important types of activities to help with executive functioning skills among young kids.
Sporting activities provide an opportunity for young ones to exercise most of their executive functioning skills. Working memory is tested when kids need to remember all the rules of the game, self-control is taught when kids abide by the game rules overcoming temptations.
Likewise, cognitive function is tested when they try new tricks and tips while attempting to win the game. They also get focused on their goal, helping them with attention.
However, there are several other simple and effective activities that can be performed at home in our daily lives to help develop executive functioning skills. Some examples of physical activities include:
- Building With Blocks: Encouraging kids to build out of their imagination using Lego blocks can induce growth in their cognitive and memory skills, they first need to imagine and then memorize the design to start building.
- Playing Any Sports: Any sporting activities can trigger the development of multiple skills, for example cognitive, memory, time management, and self-control. Kids need to memorize the rules, contemplate scenarios, manage time, and adhere to rules during gameplay.
- Practicing Yoga: Yoga or other light exercise can be a helpful way of keeping your brain relaxed ensuring self-control.
3. Planning Activities
Planning for a meal can help develop numerous skills from organizing to flexibility when things start to go south.
In order to exercise planning, encourage your kids to make a list of ingredients for their recipes. Then encourage them to write down the recipe for the actual cooking.
The actual cooking part involves following instructions and giving them opportunities to make decisions when things do not go as planned can help their out-of-box thinking ability which is associated with cognitive functioning. Other similar planning activities include:
- Planning for a trip: Planning for a trip also helps kids tackle several challenges and enhance their executive functioning skills.
- Planning for an Emergency: Encouraging your kids to plan ahead for any emergency, like Tornado, that is likely to occur will help their imagination and problem-solving abilities.
4. Task Initiation Activities
Breaking down a big task into bite-sized activities will help kids learn to tackle big problems.
The activity of breaking down big tasks into smaller ones itself can teach them to plan efficiently and tackle larger problems. It is one of the task initiation skills that might come in handy in their daily lives.
Other similar task initiation activities to develop the habit of working and undertaking tasks for kids can be:
- Making a priority list: Encouraging your kids to make a priority list before undertaking multiple tasks and working their way up with simpler or most important ones can get them started in their work.
- Making a reward list: Assigning oneself a small reward after every task is completed and hiding big ones in the middle will get things going. The reward will keep kids motivated throughout their tasks.
5. Time Management Activities
Estimating and comparing the time activity will help kids learn about time management.
The activity involves making an estimation of time that might be required to complete a certain task, for example, their school project work. Now, encourage kids to complete the task and compare their estimated time to the actual time that took to complete the task.
Similar other kinds of time management activities for EFA in children can be:
- Competing against the clock: Set a fixed amount of time for completing a certain task and encourage your kid to compete against the clock. You can also use the previous record as the new time standard in the process.
- Prepare a daily schedule: Preparing a daily schedule with time allocated for activities throughout the day can help you effectively manage time. This will also teach kids time allocation and prioritizing tasks based on time availability.
6. Attentive Activities
Playing games that require high attention can be a great activity to battle distractions.
Solving scavenger hunt riddles or picture brain teasers can be an effective way for paying attention while not getting distracted as these types of games require attention to detail to answer correctly.
Other activities that can be great to promote concentration and attention while battling distraction can be:
- Preparing a distraction list: Try listing out all the distractions you face in your day-to-day life and avoid those situations altogether for keeping focused.
- Concentrate and focus: Allocate some time for a certain task, say 10 minutes for doing homework and try not to do anything else but homework during that 10 minutes.
7. The School Activities
School activities and curricula designed to teach kids to master their executive functions have a lasting impact.
In these types of classroom environments, kids learn to take turns, attentively listen and do storytelling activities, which help their self-control and cognitive function.
The school activities are designed to promote and help kids to learn self-regulation, socioemotional connection, and social behavior. They all fall into different parts of the executive functioning activities.
Kids learn these skills at school with dramatic play and cooperative learning. Tools of the Mind approach, developed by two neuroscientists, is also widely used where kids are taught to use their acquired skillsets to become active learners and add new skillsets as Tools of their Mind.
Some of the classroom activities that help kids with their EFA are:
- Storytelling: Letting kids tell their favorite story in front of the class with help boost their confidence along with their memory power and cognitive function, encouraging them to alter the ending might be an additional challenge worth the try.
- Taking turns with coloring book: Assigning one coloring book to two or more students and making them wait for their turn to color will help them develop the ability of self-control. They also develop the ability to work in teams as well.