Brain Exercises For Kids: 45+ Fun Activities To Develop Your Child’s Brain

The brain is a muscle, and like all muscles, you can train it and improve it to get unbelievable results.

The good news is that you don't need to go to the gym or buy any special equipment - just have fun with your child while playing games and improving your child's cognitive skills!

This blog post will discuss more than 45 brain exercises for kids that help develop several skills of the child's brain.

These physical exercises promote reaction control, inter-hemispheric connections, visual attention, reaction speed, hand-eye coordination, motor planning, and many more cognitive skills.

We have played all these games at home and had a lot of fun with the kids. Some of the exercises can handle even 3-year-olds; most of the activities, however, will be available for 4-5-year-olds and older.

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Disclaimer: I'm not a health professional, OT or physiotherapist. We gathered all the exercises in this blog post from several OT, SLP, and other specialized resources over a couple of years. At home, we used these exercises with our kids and saw great results. However, if your child has any health or developmental issues, you must consult all the activities with a licensed practitioner.

1. Stretching exercises to increase brain activity in kids

Stretching is a great warm-up activity for children of all ages that is better to do daily, especially in the morning. Such exercises help deal with muscle hyper- and hypotonias and balance and stabilize muscle tone in the body because often a child may have different muscle tones in the muscles of their body. Stretching exercises also help to activate the brain and increase its activity. All the stretching exercises a child should do gently, having a comfortable feeling of natural and soft stretching in their body.

Pharaoh

A child lies on their back, hugging themselves with their arms (right hand is holding left shoulder, left hand - right shoulder). The child should tear his head off the floor and raise it to their chest without raising the shoulders (hold for 3-5 seconds). The body lies motionless, and the legs don't move. Rest in the starting position. Repeat 3-5 times.

Butterfly

A child lies on their belly, forehead on the fingers, pressed to the floor. Thier elbows also lie on the floor. On command, the child raises their elbows, like butterfly wings, as high as possible for 3-5 seconds, then lowers them. Repeat the exercise 5-6 times. Try to keep the child's elbows as high as possible. You can also pull the child's arms up a little and very gently.

Then ask the child to "fly like a butterfly": the elbows lie on the floor - the head rises, the head goes down - the elbows rise.

Clever Cat

The child stands in the "cat" position on their knees and palms; on command, the right hand is stretching forward, and the right leg - backward (it turns out to be a straight line "arm-back-leg"). Ask the child keep the balance for 3-5 seconds in each stretch. In the same way, stretch the left side. Then ask the child to do a cross stretching: the right hand is stretching with the left foot; the left hand is stretching with the right foot.

Back Stretch

Have the child lie on their back and stretch their hands above the head on the floor. Then ask your child to extend the right part of their body by pulling their right arm and leg in the opposite direction while the left arm and leg are relaxed. The child should hold this position for 3-5 seconds; then relax for 3-5 seconds; repeat several times. Then ask your child to stretch the left part of their body.

To make the stretch more challenging, have your child stretch the opposite arm and leg: the left arm and right leg, then the right arm and left leg.

Belly Stretch

It is the same type of stretch as above, but the child lies on their belly. First, ask to stretch the right leg and arm, then the left, then the opposite arm and leg. To make it easier for younger kids, you can ask your child to reach a toy either by arms or legs.

2. Brain exercises for kids to improve impulse control and voluntary attention

Dance Freeze

Everyone dances along to the music in this game. When the music stops, each player must immediately freeze and hold that pose until the music starts again. If a player does not freeze immediately, they perform 10 jumping jacks before joining the dance again.

A similar but more complicated version is when children dance until you raise an arm or some object. When you raise the flag, everyone should stop, although the music continues to play!

Cunning Dances

The aim of the game is to make an opposite movement to the leader. For example, when you are dancing with a child, if you squat, then the child - bounces; if you jump up, the child takes a squat.

Animal World 

Junior level challenge

Tell children to choose five animals and then determine a movement that children must do when hearing the animal's name. For example, bunny - jump, horse - click your tongue and kick your foot on the floor, lobster - take steps back, crow - waving your arms, stork - stand on one leg.

Then have the children dance or walk around the room. When children hear an animal's name, they should perform a predetermined movement.

Expert level challenge

 Another game variant for older children would be to write numbers on cards and determine a movement to each number. The children act according to the number they see. For example, 1 - stand on one leg; 2 - sit down; 3 - clap your hands; 4 - jump up; 5 - stomp your foot. Start with single cards and then make sequences like 13542314. Children must perform all the movements in the order shown on the cards.

Master level challenge

The most advanced version of the game can get mind-boggling even for adults, but this doesn't mean that your child wouldn't handle it.

Choose three colors, for ex., yellow, green, and red. Then assign a category to each color, like yellow is for plants, green is for food, red is for countries. Choose any topic on which your child has enough vocabulary. Then follow the rules below depending on your child's age and skills. If you see that the rules are easy for them, it is better to choose more challenging because only in challenging games does the brain develop best.

1. show the child a color, and they should name a word from a given category! Then you alternate colors, and the child should say the correct words from the category. For example, you show red - the child answers "Canada," green - "beans," yellow - "oak,"; and so on, displaying the colors in any order. The faster you can play, the better.
2. first, you show the color, then you can name it without visual support, so the child has to remember what category to use and the word they should say for each color.
3. draw a sequence of the colors with crayons so that the child must switch from color to color and name a word from the determined category!
4. write a sequence of these colors (green, yellow, red, red, green, red, yellow), which means that you need to write the names of the color but use for the writing of color names a wrong color. For example, write the word GREEN with a red crayon, YELLOW write with a green crayon, RED with a yellow crayon. The child should read the name of the color and say the word from the right category, focusing on the color they read, not the color of the pencil the word was written with!

Ball games

These are fun games, but you can almost hear their brain working when a child plays them. These games may seem easy to you, but they are challenging enough for kids and boost children's attention and impulse control.

A child throws the ball up and calls aloud only an even number, and the child must catch the ball after they have said the number. The game then looks like this: on one - throw up the ball without saying the number, then catch the ball; on two - throw the ball up and say "two!", then catch the ball; on three - throw the ball up and catch the ball; on four - throw the ball up and say "four!", then catch the ball, etc. Counting continues till 10, 20, 30, depending on your child's current knowledge. You can play the same game using uneven numbers in the second round.

You can make this game more challenging in several different ways:

1. Say two numbers while throwing up a ball two times, then throw up the ball two times without calling out the following two numbers, then again say two numbers while throwing up the ball two times, etc. For example, throw the ball up - say "one" - catch the ball - throw the ball up - say "two" - catch the ball - throw the ball up - catch the ball - throw the ball up - catch the ball - throw the ball up - say "five" - catch the ball - throw the ball up - say "six" - catch the ball - throw the ball up - catch the ball - throw the ball up - catch the ball - throw the ball up - say "nine," etc.
2. On one: throw the ball up - catch the ball; on two: drop the ball on the floor - catch the ball; on three: throw the ball up - catch the ball; on four: drop the ball on the floor - catch the ball, etc.
3. When you throw the ball up - say numbers from 1 to 10; when you drop the ball - say numbers from 10 to 1. Do this alternately. The scheme will look like this: throw the ball up - say "one" - catch the ball; drop the ball on the floor - say "ten" - catch the ball; throw the ball up - say "two" - catch the ball; drop the ball on the floor - say "nine" - catch the ball. In the end, when you throw the ball up, you should say "ten," and when you drop the ball on the floor, there should be "one" because you counted backward each time you dropped the ball.

3. Brain exercises for kids to build spatial thinking

Spatial awareness is the ability to comprehend and interact with your surroundings. Whether you're walking around avoiding obstacles, reaching out for a crayon, or determining left from right, these activities require spatial awareness. The latest research demonstrates how spatial skills impact the understanding of math and other STEM disciplines in the school. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2021.101515) 

Spatial skills and especially spatial awareness develop in several stages:

1. At first, a child develops their own body awareness and body parts.
2. Then, the child starts to understand their body in space. This spatial thinking begins in infancy and develops through toddlerhood when children practice their gross motor skills and develop motor planning skills.
3. Also, starting at an early age, children discover objects in space, their relations to each other and with the child's body, as well as physical laws that these objects follow (e.g., that if a child throws that toy, it will not float, but fall on the floor).
4. In preschool years children start to understand two-dimensional space (space on a paper sheet). Their drawings improve with time and reflect the spatial relations between objects as they see them. Children learn the concepts of direction, size, length.
5. In the next stage, children develop their visual-spatial skills. Such skills develop from early childhood and long into the upper-elementary age. Children can now imagine and visualize objects and their relations in space. Also, at this point, children comprehend more complex spatial language and effectively use spatial reference systems. Visual-spatial skills are linked to math performance, so improving spatial thinking can result in better math skills.
6. The last one starts the development of spatial-temporal reasoning, which allows for the mental manipulation of objects in space and time. Children begin to understand time around kindergarten age, and the development of spatial-temporal skills continues in school. The spatial-temporal reasoning is very important for math skills and is crucial in understanding math concepts.

For the effective development of spatial skills, a child needs to successfully go through every stage of development, starting with the basic understanding of their body scheme and knowing where the right hand, left ear, or right elbow is. They should understand the spatial language, position of objects, and their body in space and comprehend the concepts of direction, distance, measurements, etc. So, when parents want to help their child develop strong spatial skills, it is essential to start from the foundation, the body awareness, and slowly move towards building more complex skills like spatial-temporal reasoning.

To check the basic knowledge of the body parts, ask your child to show their left thumb, right temple, or right shin. If they do not know the name of the body parts or cannot distinguish left from right, this should be your starting point. Below, we offer fun and easy games that improve several spatial awareness components and help refine spatial skills.

Hot Dog

The game gives proprioceptive information from deep muscles and helps to form the body map. Wrap the baby in a blanket and press lightly on top with your body. Or wrap the child tightly in a yoga mat and roll on the soft floor in different directions.

Loader

Heavy-duty activities are proprioceptive inputs, such as lifting or carrying heavy loads. In the Loader game, the task is to lift and carry something heavy: a tray with water bottles, grocery bags, pushing a stroller with something heavy in it. This activity also helps the child to feel the muscles and build the body scheme.

Simon Says

The game is excellent for learning to identify and name body parts. This Simon Says game is a more challenging version, where a parent calls out more than one activity, for example: "Rub your right elbow with your left hand, scratch your left knee with your right heel, tickle your left ear with your right index finger, tap your right elbow with your right side ..."

Wrong Mirror

Take a sit in front of your child. The child has to copy your moves with the correct body part. For example, if you touch your ear with your right hand, the child must touch theirs also with their right hand, which will be the opposite hand from your side. You could also name the body part you are touching at the beginning. For ex., point to the right shin and call it. The child must also point to their right shin, not to mirror your move. Then you could stop naming and just point to different body parts and even increase the speed in case the game is too easy for the child.

Robot

The child depicts a robot that accurately and correctly executes the following commands: "One step forward, two steps to the right, jump up, three steps to the left, turn right, right again, turn left, down (crouch)."

Then the children act like the naughty robot, which performs all the commands in reverse:

• The robot goes not forward but backward.
• Instead of jumping up, the robot crouches.
• The robot turns left, not right.

After the child begins to quickly and correctly execute all commands, complicate the task: "Step to the left with your right foot; two steps forward starting with the left foot, three steps back with the right foot..."

Create a Symmetry

You could use ice-cream sticks, pipes, twigs, or any colorful rods to create a part of a simple figure. Ask your child to build the other half to complete the image symmetrically. You could increase the difficulty of your half by adding more components to your following figure and ask a child to finish the picture and build a symmetrical figure vertically, horizontally, or in a mirror reflection to yours.

Mirror Drawings

Such a mirror game is a more advanced version of the previous game for lower-el children. Put a simple drawing upside down in front of the child. This may be the sun in the sky, a couple of clouds, a tree with some flowers, a bird on its brunch or a cat under the tree, grass or bushes on one side under the tree. Then set the instruction: what the artist painted on the right, then you will also have it on the right, what the artist has on the left, then you have the left, what the artist has at the top, then you have the same thing at the top and about the bottom.

It doesn't matter if the child draws all the details precisely; only the correct arrangement of objects in the picture is important here. Then put two drawings side by side and compare. They shouldn't be any different.

4. Activities to improve attention and categorical thinking

Here we describe a simple but super fun set of games that boost attention in kids. In the most simple variant, ask your child to clap hands when they hear a word from a given category.

Catch all the animals:

aquarium, elephant, table, barrel, lizard, asphalt, glasses, rat, horse, boa constrictor, pilot, chicken, cupboard, fork, coffee, castle, fence, hare, apple, monkey, carpet, cow, bus, slippers, camel, goat, vase, crocodile, flashlight, artist, Pinocchio, chain, electric train, hamster, porcupine, antelope, beetroot, dance, helicopter, octopus.

Catch everything that flies:

picture, letter, airplane, fly, stork, dog, steamer, swing, window, balloon, coin, accountant, tram, mosquito, TV, butterfly, tablecloth, tomato, duck, helicopter, boat, tree, samovar, pumpkin, paddle, fence, rocket, stove, dragonfly.

Catch a profession:

school, driver, scissors, birch, architect, hairdresser, talker, thunderstorm, pencil, parrot, electrician, mill, boots, ocean, law, builder, rainbow, veterinarian, dragonfly, fantasy, ballerina, economist, doctor, secretary, lazybones, car, hat, keys, tourist, dictionary, cliff, movie, volcano, foreigner, sculptor, fat man, fireman, fashion designer.

Catch all the plants:

mirror, palm tree, birch, bicycle, magpie, kettle, squirrel, rose, dandelion, pumpkin, wheel, trumpet, tulip, notebook, doll, nettle, pillow, deceit, desert, poplar, island, wild rose, museum, lily of the valley, pine, plantain, skis, gun, seagull, road, grapes, apple tree, vermicelli, grass.

To increase the challenge, choose three categories and assign a particular movement to each category: edible - slap the table with your right hand; inedible - left, living - clap your hands!

Edible, inedible, live:

skittles, tomato, chicken, crane, lion, table, house, soup, cake, tassel, salad, traffic light, parrot, tree, wild boar, saw, giraffe, window, hay, ice cream, phone, cutlet, banana, felt-tip pen, horse, carriage, camel, saddle, pie, milk, yogurt, barbecue, iceberg, plane, dolphin, dinosaur, apple.

5. Fine motor skills and motor planning exercises

Writing is a complex skill that demands the coordinated efforts of many small muscles in the hand and arm, visual perception, and voluntary attention. Therefore, developing fine motor skills as early as possible is necessary, long before a child enters school. By regularly playing finger games and performing special exercises, a child may strengthen the small finger muscles and improve visual-motor coordination.

For activities like typing, pointing, and writing, the skill of isolating the individual fingers is crucial. These abilities might be complex for some children and lead to poor pencil grasp, handwriting, shoe tying problems, and other everyday challenges.

There is a great finger training program called Finger Fitness. The training program by Greg Irwin aims to improve the coordination of finger movements and is excellent for the development of fine motor skills and isolated finger movements. Below are videos of finger exercises that are best suitable for preschoolers.

Motor planning is also an essential component of solid writing skills and the ability to do many unfamiliar tasks. Each time a child faces a new motor activity or an altered version of routine motor activity, their motor planning skills are challenged in the classroom. Therefore, children with motor planning difficulties may become exhausted by the end of the school day, require movement or sensory breaks, and step-by-step procedure reminders in new activities.

Motor planning connects ideas with doing things; it is essential when a person needs to do something unmastered, unusual in life, when there is a new task. Therefore, motor planning is the most complex form of the nervous system functioning in children. Since planning requires voluntary attention, it is closely related to cognitive functions when it enables the brain to message the muscles and send them in the required sequence.

That is why it is crucial to refine motor planning skills in kids as soon as possible.

The most important thing to remember when developing fine motor and motor planning skills is that if a child performs a task easily and quickly, skip it and move forward. If the task seems challenging, repeat the task until the child carries out the movements easily and promptly. It is necessary to do such challenging games regularly until they are fully mastered, usually for 5 minutes every day. Motor planning typically gets faster and more efficient as you practice a particular task.

Here we suggest playing with your children good old string games. These games are fantastic for developing self-control, building a program, following this program, overcoming motor automatisms, developing motor memory and kinesthetic sense, performing accuracy, isolating each movement. Performance of one action after another in a row trains the brain to keep the program, helping the child's brain develop self-regulation skills effectively.

We also recommend this book with many finger string games suitable for 5-6-year olds and up. What is great about this book, it already comes with strings attached.

When a child already knows a string trick by heart, this is not a new action but almost a skill, so no motor planning is involved. So do not stick for too long with one trick; if you see that the child can efficiently perform it, quickly move to another one.

For younger children, string games may be too hard to execute. Therefore, with 2.5-3-year-olds and older, we recommend playing hand shadow games. First of all, these games are a great tool to battle the increasing fear of the darkness at this age. Also, these are fun motor planning exercises that excite kids!

For 3-year-olds and up check out this book:

It is worth emphasizing that motor planning develops naturally when a child learns to perform new actions through fine or gross motor skills. Cutting scissors and riding a bike all require motor planning before the brain forms a skill.

6. Gross motor activities to boost visual-motor integration

One of the best ways to boost visual-motor integration is to play with balls. Good visual-motor skills are essential in school, especially in handwriting and math as well as in numerous daily occupations. Start with the simplest activities and the big or medium-sized ball, slowly progressing to smaller balls to increase the challenge:

• throw up and catch the ball;
• throw up the ball, clap your hands and catch it;
• drop the ball on the floor and catch; do the same with a clap;
• hit the ball against the wall and catch it without letting it hit the ground; repeat the same with a clap
• hit the wall with a ball, let it bounce off the ground, and only then catch it
• throw balls of different sizes at a vertical target (for example, in a hoop) and into a horizontal target (basket, bucket).
• combine a ball-throwing game with learning: a parent throws a ball and names the month, a child catches the ball and says what season this month belongs to (you can choose any topic you like).

RELATED: Gross Motor Skills: How to Teach Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers

7. Brain exercises for kids to expand inter-hemispheric connections

Exercises to strengthen inter-hemispheric communication help improve mental activity, synchronize the hemispheres' work, enhance memory recall, improve attention span, and ease the writing process. Furthermore, for the acquisition of more complicated language skills, proper communication between the left and right sides of the brain is critical.

Here is a helpful video of hand exercises that boost connections between hemispheres:

There are many more exercises for developing inter-hemispheric connections in the following paragraphs. These activities are beneficial if done every day for a few weeks to allow the connections to solidify.

Cross steps

Make alternating cross movements with arms and legs while walking in place, first touching hands with opposite legs in front of you, then behind your back. Instead of walking, you can do jumping in place in the same way. This activity helps develop interhemispheric interactions, spatial representations, accuracy and coordination of movements, formation of the function of control, and serial organization of movements.

Bike Ride

A child imitates cycling with his feet while touching the opposite knee with his elbow; then - the other knee, then the opposite.

Rocking Chair

Ask a child to sit on the floor, pull their knees up to the belly, wrap their arms around their knees, hide the head between them. The child should then roll from one side to the other, forward-backward, rolling all the vertebrae on the floor.

Belly Crawl

Starting position - lying on a belly.

• first, ask a child to crawl on a belly using their arms and legs (first head forward, then feet forward);
• then ask them to crawl using hands only;
• crawl only using the legs
  

Back Crawl

Starting position - lying on a back.

• ask a child to crawl on their back using arms and legs (head forward, then feet forward);
• ask the child to use only their hands for crawling;
• then ask the child to crawl using the legs only.

The Log

A child rolls their body like a log on the floor back and forth. First, the arms extend above the head, then along the body.

Walking on all fours

The starting position is on all fours. When walking on all fours, a child should simultaneously place the arm and the leg. The gaze goes forward. When you accelerate the tempo, this exercise gets more challenging.

Sidesteps

Invite the children to stand against the wall, feet in shoulder-width apart, palms resting on the wall at eye level; move along the wall to the right (10-15 ft) and then to the left, making sidesteps. First, the arm and leg of the same body side move simultaneously (arms parallel to the legs), and then the opposite arm and leg.

Cross Marching

At first, the child walks slowly, alternately touching either the right or the left hand to the opposite knee (cross movements). Adult counts 1-12 at a slow pace. Then, the child walks by touching the same side's knee (unilateral moves). Also, with the counting up to 1-12.

Repeat this exercise three more times with cross movements, then - unilateral, then once again cross movements. This exercise must always start and end with cross movements. Speed up the counting to make it more challenging or ask the child to count themselves.

Mills

Invite your child to make simultaneous circular movements of the arm and leg. First with the left hand and left foot, then with the right hand and right foot. In the beginning, the rotation is performed clockwise, then counterclockwise. Ask the child to move the arm clockwise and the foot counterclockwise to make the exercise challenging. The arm and the opposite leg must move simultaneously in this exercise.

Arms-legs

Children are invited to perform jumps in place with simultaneous movements of their arms and legs:

-legs together - legs apart

-legs apart - arms together

-legs together - arms together

-legs apart - arms apart.

Parade Walk

Marching to the count: "one - two - three - four." In the first cycle of steps, clap your hands on the count of "one," in the second - on the count of "two," in the third - on the count of "three," in the fourth - on the count of "four." Repeat several times.

8. Brain exercises for kids to hone sequential movements

A smooth transition from one movement to another forms a vital motor skill - sequential movements. Such sequential movements, programming, self-regulation, and control are structural parts of reading and writing skills. They take part in switching from element to element when writing, from letter to letter, in reading fluency. Moreover, switching between languages, subtraction, and addition in mathematical tasks, from excitation to inhibition, also requires the skill of sequential movements.

"Many of our daily actions, such as playing a musical instrument, handwriting, typing, etc., depend on attaining a high level of skill in the performance of sequential movements. The performance of sequential movements can be acquired and improved to the expert level through extensive practice (Rosenbaum, 2010). Such performance can be maintained as a motor skill. How the brain binds elementary movements together into skilled sequential movements has been a fundamental problem of systems neuroscience." (https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.640659)

In the case of underdeveloped skill of sequential movements, a person has problems with movement accuracy, coordination, letter perseveration errors. Children also struggle with stumbling reading, slow pace reading, prolonged automation of sounds when learning to talk.

To overcome problems with sequential movements, the exercises aimed at restoring the ability of the successive organization of motor acts work great. Therefore, the main thing in correction is the development of smooth switching of the sequential movements. They will help the child learn to switch well from thought to thought in speech, reading, writing. Exercises with simultaneous actions with two hands, tasks for reciprocal coordination of movements are often recommended to improve the sequential movement skill.

It is also worth emphasizing that even if a child doesn't have noticeable problems with sequential movements, playing games to refine these skills might help in reading, writing, and even thinking.

Games for refining sequential movements include juggling, movement-to-the-rhythm, video games like "Just Dance," etc. Below are several short videos that you can try with your children at home. If these tasks are too easy for the child, you can make them more challenging by speeding up.

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