Executive Function
The Impact Academy is excited about holistically engaging with children! TIA has worked with The Rural Opportunity Institute to learn about trauma-informed best practices. ROI works to support trauma-informed and resilient communities. We utilize Executive Function to help develop preschoolers to help them process through their past and current experienes while preparing them to be resilient in their future experiences and development.
What is Executive Function and what role does it play in social development?
Executive function helps the brain organize and act on information. These are the skills that enable us to pay attention, plan, remember things, prioritize, and stay on task. While children are not born with Executive Function skills, they do possess the ability to develop these skills, which have been shown to be the best predictors of Kindergarten readiness and long-term academic and life success. Oftentimes, attention problems in children are not permanent and can be improved with the development of Executive Function skills.
Our plan is to begin the pretest with your child the week of November 8th. Once we have the pretests completed, each child will receive a specialized link to play games at home to help grow their elective function skills., These fun activities promote social emotional learning, mindfulness, and self-regulation. It will reach them exactly where they are with their skill level. Then, after working on these skills in the classroom and at home, we will administer a post test before Christmas vacation. We are excited to see the growth and share in that success with you!
We invite you to take a free online course for parents HERE. It’s very short, informational, and will help you to better understand why we find this to be important for your child. We wil be sending home an activity for you to complete with your child, as well as a specialized link to play some tablet games. We are so excited about this project and look forward to seeing the great growth in our kids! We will have more information to you soon.
What can I do to support my child with this?
» Encourage your preschooler to be creative and implement their own ideas.
For instance, say your preschooler wants to make a fort in the living room. You can help them determine what supplies they will need for the fort and show them helpful construction techniques.
» Ask your child to retell or act out a familiar story while staying as close as possible to the actual story’s plot.
This helps develop memory and helps your preschooler pay attention to story progression. If your child is acting out the story, feel free to pull out some fun props to use!
» Give children plenty of opportunities to imagine and pretend!
When children engage in pretend play, they think about objects as something they are not. This is great for mental flexibility! When imaginary worlds have different rules and ways of doing things, children are learning to stretch their thinking.
» Let your child have choices when appropriate.
When children get to choose, they take responsibility and are more motivated for the task. For example, when cleaning up, offer the child small choices about what they would like to pick up first. When you are leaving the house, ask your child what they need to do to get ready (e.g. shoes, coats, etc.) When you let your child have some control over the task, they are learning more about how to do it themselves rather than just following your instructions.
» Get moving!
When children are active, their hearts get pumping and their brains get more blood flow! Take your child on a walk, go to the park, or have a dance party in your living room. Spending time each day moving around can actually help children sit still and be focused when they need to.
» Play games that require children to follow rules and control their body.
These games, such as Red Light Green Light or the B-I-N-G-O song, require the child to pay close attention and also inhibit impulsive movement, which is great for learning self-control!
» Teach your child explicit strategies to use when they are upset.
Naming the emotion they are feeling is a good start. Calming strategies like 10 deep breaths or walking away from the situation and coming back are also useful. When children have strategies to deal with intense emotions they feel more in control and are able to work through emotions more successfully!
More Resources for you
» Understood.org works to support the millions of parents of children with learning and attention issues. They offer personalized resources, free daily access to experts, a secure online community, practical tips and more.
» The Vroom website has many ideas for specific activities parents can do with their children to help brain growth! You can even download an app that will give you new ideas every day!
» The Harvard Center for the Developing Child has created an extensive list of games and activities that adults can play with kids (infants through adolescents) to promote school readiness.
» The Search Institute has put out a short Research Brief that explains the concept of Executive Function and gives parents and practitioners some ideas about what they can do to help.
