Playing Games Builds the Brain!

I noticed this article over the summer and saved it to share with y'all here! It is about how playing typical childhood games (like Red Light Green Light or Simon Says) strengthens the "executive functions" of children's brains.

The executive functions are super important for learning and success in life. They are a group of several different overlapping brain skills that control when and how we organize, prioritize, sequence, and use information and feedback. Executive functions were once described to me as the "conductor" who is directing the "symphony" of various brain areas, skills, and tasks. Some examples of executive functions are time management, flexibility in thought/behavior/emotion, beginning and completing activities, self-correction/monitoring, goal-setting, problem-solving, and planning.

There is a lot of research and attention focused on the significance of executive functions lately. The article mentions that one recent study showed that "a child’s ability at age 4 to pay attention and complete a task... were the greatest predictors of whether he or she finished college by age 25." Whoa!

Anyway, the article says that play is one of the most cognitively stimulating things a child can do, and that the key to making games educational is to start with a simple game and add increasingly complicated rules.

From the article:“We tend to equate learning with the content of learning, with what information children have, rather than the how of learning,” says Ellen Galinsky, a child-development researcher and author of Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs. “But focusing on the how of learning, on executive functions, gives you the skills to learn new information, which is why they tend to be so predictive of long-term success."

If you'd like more information, you can find the whole article at the link below. If you'd like me to send home a few pages I can copy from a book I have about executive functions (called Tigers Too), just let me know!

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/simon-says-dont-use-flashcards/

Thanks for reading! We are glad you are here!