What are activities to improve executive functions?

Structured cognitive exercises used with NeuronUP by professionals to target executive functions such as working memory, inhibition, planning, flexibility and sustained attention in adults and children.

What is the Bottle Caps activity?

An exercise where users order bottle caps from smallest to largest while moving; it trains working memory, inhibition, hemispatial neglect and sustained attention. A children's version is called The Little Glutton.

What does Word Association train?

A worksheet that requires matching related words to train reasoning, semantic association and categorization; available in five difficulty levels from easy to advanced.

What does Mixed Images train?

A children’s task of moving blocks to reconstruct an image in order; it primarily trains planning, visuospatial skills and understanding of spatial relationships.

How does Hit the Target Right improve executive functions?

A paper activity that requires creating different plays to reach a specified score; it trains cognitive flexibility, working memory and reasoning across five difficulty levels.

How is Time estimation used in therapy?

Worksheets ask clients to estimate durations of daily activities to improve temporal judgment, planning and time management, with example tasks provided at basic levels.

5 Activities to Improve Executive Functions

We propose activities to improve executive functions used by professionals who work with NeuronUP.

Activities to train executive functions:

1. Bottle Caps

What does it consist of?

In this exercise users will have to order the Bottle Caps from smallest to largest while they are moving.

NeuronUP activities - Bottle Caps with letters — Alphabet game for adults: Bottle Caps with letters.

What does this activity train?

By practicing it you will mainly work on three executive functions: working memory, inhibition and hemispatial neglect. Sustained attention is also trained.

Children’s version: The Little Glutton

This cognitive rehabilitation activity to improve executive functions is also available for children under the name The Little Glutton. A game where children have to eat all the cookies, although they must follow a strict order.

NeuronUP activities - The Little Glutton — Activity: The Little Glutton.

2. Word Association

What does it consist of?

A worksheet to work on reasoning in which users have to be able to match words that are related to each other.

Play by levels

Like all NeuronUP worksheets, the “Word Association” activity has five levels of difficulty: from an easy level to an advanced one.

Below we show a medium-level worksheet.

We have related several concepts:

Profession-occupation-job
Quarter-semester-millennium
Herbivore-omnivore-carnivore

Can your users relate all the missing concepts?

3. Mixed Images

What does it consist of?

In this activity created specifically for children, they must move the blocks in an orderly way until they achieve the desired image.

NeuronUP activities - Mixed Images — NeuronUP activity – Mixed Images

Can you assemble it correctly?

What does this activity train?

It trains planning, as well as other cognitive functions such as visuospatial skills and spatial relationships.

4. Hit the Target Right

What does it consist of?

Below we present a paper activity that consists of creating plays that reach the indicated score. Keep in mind that all plays must be different.

Play by levels

We have five levels of difficulty: from a basic level to an advanced level. We present an example of an advanced level:

What does this activity train?

This paper worksheet trains flexibility, working memory and reasoning.

5. Time estimation

What does it consist of?

This final exercise is very useful for the therapist to work with their clients on time estimation of different activities.

Below, we provide an example of a basic worksheet:

NeuronUP activity - Time estimation — NeuronUP activity – Time estimation

We hope these activities to improve executive functions have been useful for working with your clients! If you’d like to try more NeuronUP exercises to use in your practice or center, just request our free trial: