5 Activities Designed to Work with Children with ADHD

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is characterized by clear symptoms of inattention and/or impulsivity-hyperactivity. It’s estimated that, on average, there is one child with ADHD in every classroom. In a previous blog post, we discussed its symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. Today, to mark ADHD Awareness Day and to help raise awareness of this disorder, we suggest five NeuronUP activities for working with children with ADHD.

Activities for children with ADHD

Here are five activities for working with children with ADHD.

1. Obstacle Gymkhana

First, we present Obstacle Gymkhana, the first of these ADHD intervention activities.

What does it involve?

It’s a worksheet in which children memorize a series of obstacles and then draw the requested route avoiding them.

What does this activity work on?

Its main function is episodic memory, and its secondary function is planning.

Play by levels

Like all NeuronUP worksheets, it has five difficulty levels that let professionals tailor the activity to each patient’s abilities: basic, easy, medium, hard, and advanced.

2. Space Conquest

What does it involve?

This space-themed exercise for children involves jumping between moving planets until reaching the final destination.

What does this activity work on?

This game works on spatial relations, sustained attention, inhibition, planning, and processing speed.

Play by levels

As in all NeuronUP games, the difficulty goes up and down automatically according to the user’s correct answers and mistakes.

Customizing the activity

In addition, in this type of activity you can create custom levels to adapt it to the specific needs of a child with ADHD.

Parameters

You can set parameters such as:

• The speed,
• the number of channels on screen,
• the number of channels,
• the format,
• the distractors.

General settings

You can also choose other general settings such as:

• The number of exercises,
• the time limit,
• whether or not to show a visible timer for the activity,
• whether or not to include an inactivity alert,
• editing the instructions.

3. Camouflaged Letters

What does it involve?

This attention worksheet is one of the ideal activities for working with children with ADHD. It involves finding the words that contain the indicated letters.

What does this activity work on?

This activity works on selective attention.

Play by levels

This activity has five difficulty levels: basic, easy, medium, hard, and advanced.

7+1 activities for children with special educational needs

4. How much time does it take?

What does it involve?

It’s a worksheet that involves organizing different activities in a planner, taking into account how long each one would take.

Here’s an example in the following video:

What does this activity work on?

This worksheet works on time estimation and, secondarily, planning.

With this worksheet, children learn to estimate how long things take so they can organize themselves better. They also learn to plan in order to organize their tasks.

Play by levels

There are five difficulty levels for this task: basic, easy, medium, hard, and advanced.

Everyday application

It’s ideal for working on everyday activities for children with ADHD, such as packing their backpack, putting away their toys, or taking a shower.

5. Search and you will find!

Finally, one of the most fun activities for working with children with ADHD.

What does it involve?

In the game Search and you will find!, children have to look for a series of specific items within a group, as shown in the following video:

What does this activity work on?

This game also works on selective attention.

Play by levels

The user moves up and down levels automatically, according to their correct answers and mistakes.

Customizing the activity

Parameters

You can set parameters such as:

• Number of items,
• number of stimuli to find,
• the maximum number of errors.

General settings

You can also choose other general settings such as:

• The number of exercises,
• the time limit,
• whether or not to show a visible timer for the activity,
• whether or not to include an inactivity alert,
• editing the instructions.

Why these activities matter when working with children with ADHD

These activities increase the motivation of children with ADHD, which has a decisive impact on the intervention, leading to better symptom control and therefore better treatment outcomes.

In addition, being able to do cognitive stimulation therapy on different devices with game-based activities is an incentive for children with ADHD. Symptoms such as inattention, hyperactivity, or impulsivity take a back seat, allowing them to work for longer without signs of reduced attention or loss of interest in the exercises.

If you enjoyed this post on activities for children with ADHD, you may also be interested in these NeuronUP articles:

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5 Actividades diseñadas para trabajar con niños con ADHD