Health & Well-Being - Executive Functions, Part 2

SONGS AND MOVEMENT GAMES support executive function because children have to move to a specific rhythm and synchronise words to actions and music. These tasks also contribute to inhibitory control and working memory.

Movement and songs

Help children test themselves physically using climbing structures or seesaws. Challenges such as obstacle courses and games such as skipping or balancing can also be fun. When children are trying new, difficult activities, they need to focus attention, monitor and adjust their actions and persist to achieve a goal.

Encourage attention control through quieter activities that require children to focus and reduce stimulation, such as balancing on a beam, which also requires slow breathing.

Play music and have children dance at different speeds. You can also ask them to freeze, or freeze in certain positions.

Songs that repeat and add on to earlier sections, either through words or motions, such as She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain, are great challenges to working memory. You can also use backward-counting songs, such as Ten Green Bottles, or songs repeating a long list, such as the Alphabet Song.

Traditional song games are also fun. Complex actions, including finding partners, must be accomplished without becoming distracted.

Quiet games and other activities

Add difficulty to matching and sorting activities by asking children to sort by different rules, promoting cognitive flexibility. Children can first sort or match by one rule, such as by colour, and then immediately switch to a new rule, such as by shape. Or play a bingo game in which children have to mark a card with the opposite of what is called out, such as placing a chip on a night-time picture when the word ‘day’ is called.

Increasingly complicated puzzles can engage children and exercise their visual working memory and planning skills.

Cooking helps children practise inhibition when waiting for instructions, working memory while holding complicated directions in mind, and focused attention when measuring and counting.

Courtesy of the Center on the Developing Child