Looking for ways to re-engage your student in the new year? Check out these games that are not only fun and engaging but also improve executive functioning skills!
- Max
- Improves: cooperation, self-regulation, planning and prioritizing, flexible thinking
- Ages: 4-7
- Max is a “cooperative game.” Players work together to safely get a bird, a chipmunk and a mouse back home before hungry Max the cat pounces on them.
- Jenga
- Improves: self-monitoring, flexible thinking, impulse control
- Ages: 8 and up
- This classic game requires players to be aware and in control of their actions, and those are great skills for kids to hone.
- Distraction
- Improves: working memory, flexible thinking
- Ages: 8 and up
- Players take turns drawing number cards and remembering a growing sequence of digits. Draw a Distraction Card and you must answer a quirky question before reciting the numbers in order!
- Mind Trap
- Improves: flexible thinking
- Ages: 12 and up (some adult content)
- Game full of quirky characters, baffling brain teasers, and convoluted logic! It’s a great party game and a good way to exercise the brain! The game includes four different categories of questions: Rebus Riddles, Classic Conundrums, Picture Puzzles, and of course, MindTrap Mysteries.
- AnimaLogic
- Improves: planning and prioritizing, flexible thinking, organization
- Ages: 5 and up
- Lions, hippos, giraffes, and camels are all waiting to get to the other side of the river, but they can only cross the bridge one at a time and in the correct sequence. Solve the sequence and then move the animals in the proper order to get them safely to the other side – The puzzle’s complete once all sixteen wooden animals are removed from the game board!
- Snake Oil
- Improves: task initiation, flexible thinking, organization
- Ages: 10 and up
- A great game for kids who love role-playing. With each round, a different Snake Oil player draws a “customer” card. It tells them what character they are—rock star, clown, doctor, etc. The other players draw cards with words that they can combine to make up zany products, like a “Rubber Fish” to sell to that character. Kids have to figure out what the product might do, how to pitch it well, and how their characters might respond. It’s a fun way to get them thinking on their feet!
- Quiddler
- Improves: organization, flexible thinking, planning and prioritizing, promotes literacy
- Ages: 8 and up
- The goal is to arrange all the cards in your hand into one or more words. The number of cards dealt increases each round – starting with three cards and ending with 10 cards.
- Quiddler Junior (ages 6 and up)
- No Stress Chess
- Improves: planning and prioritizing, organization, task initiation, impulse control, flexible thinking
- Ages: 7 and up
- You can play instantly because the special game board guides you to set up your pieces and each card in the innovative deck shows you how to move the piece it pictures. You just set the pieces on the board, shuffle the deck, and begin to play! No Stress Chess teaches players the moves of all the Chess pieces.
- Bananagrams
- Improves: planning and organization, literacy skills, visual attention, memory and recall, visual processing
- Ages: 7 and up
- Simple and fun with great benefits! Players and their opponents aim to use all of their letters to build a word grid in a race to the finish. The first player to use all of their tiles is crowned “Top Banana”!
- Boggle
- Improves: literacy skills, flexibility, time management
- Ages: 8 and up
- A combination of brainstorming and creative wordplay that makes Boggle such a wonderful educational tool. Players are required to identify as many words as they can within a three minute window of time forming words horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.
- Pictionary
- Improves: flexibility, time management
- Ages: 8 and up
- In this quick-draw classic, the guesses can be just as hilarious as the sketches as you use markers to draw your best rendition of the clue on the card.
- Also Pictionary Air, write in the air and shows up on a smart device
- 5 Second Rule
- Improves: time management, task initiation
- Ages: 10 and up
- Kids must name 3 things that fit a given topic. For example, kids might need to name 3 professional basketball teams or 3 pieces of jewelry. The categories differ greatly so kids have to be on their toes. As an accommodation, play as a “10 second rule” to give kids enough time to process the question.
- Sudoku
- Improves: perseverance, working memory
- Ages: 8 and up
- The object of the puzzle is to fill the remaining squares of a 9×9 grid, using all the numbers 1–9 exactly once in each row, column, and the nine 3 × 3 subgrids.
- Memory/Matching – I Never Forget a Face
- Improves: working memory, visual memory
- Ages: 3 and up
- This game consists of 24 warm and accessible children from cultures around the world, opening doors to empathy and discovery as well as working on recognition, spatial awareness, and working memory.
- Visual Brainstorms
- Improves: problem solving, prioritizing, reasoning, logic, abstract thinking
- Ages: 8 and up
- Word puzzles, logic puzzles.Many of the puzzles involve math concepts, spatial reasoning, logic, or sequential thinking, but some can be solved with plain common sense.
- What Do I Feel?
- Improves: self-regulation
- Ages: 4 and up
- The goal is to collect 4 cards with the same EMOTION theme such as Disappointment, Fear, Anger, Offense, Sadness, Happiness, Surprise, or Love. The first player asks another player if they have a card similar to one they have by explaining the picture on it. If the other player has a card, he gives it to the first player. But if no card is given, the first player picks a new card from the pile.
- The Memory Chess Game
- Improves: focus, working memory, concentration
- Ages: 3 and up
- Insert the wooden pegs to the peg board randomly with colors hidden and try to remember the color of each peg.
- The Original Memory Game
- Improves: working memory
- Ages: 3 years and up
- Flip over 2 cards and remember where cards are to make a match!
- Spot It!
- Improves: cognitive flexibility, visual processing
- Ages: 6 and up
- Spot It! hones players’ observational skills and lightning-fast reflexes as the whole family enjoys five different games modes that test who’s the fastest to spot matching symbols and call them out
- Swish
- Improves: cognitive flexibility
- Ages: 8 and up
- To play, players examine 16 cards laid out on a table and try to create more matches than their competitors to win. Matches are created by stacking two or more cards on top of one another so that a colored hoop matches up with the same color ball on a different card. When you make a match, you keep the cards. When all the cards are claimed, the player with the most cards wins.
- Thumball
- Imroves: self-regulation
- Ages: 3 and up
- Discuss self-control and how to use it in social and emotional situations. Throw the ball and respond to the prompt under your thumb!
- Set
- Improves: visual perception
- Ages: 8 and up
- The award-winning game challenges players to race to find as many SETs as they can! A SET is three cards where each individual feature (color, shape, number and shading) is either all the same OR all different! The first player to see a SET calls out “SET” and grabs the cards—there are no “turns” and no luck here!