We train the brain: games and exercises for children and adults

Preschoolers

1. “Fly”. Attention training exercise (5-8 years old)

This game is for multiple players. A 3×3 table is drawn on the asphalt with chalk (or masking tape on the floor). The cells of the table are approximately the same size as in the famous “classics”. One of the participants stands in the center. He will be our “fly”. The other participant is the leader. He stands outside the fields of the table and gives commands: “left”, “forward” … And the participant “fly” takes a step to the left, forward, etc.

The very last command of the presenter: “The fly has flown!”. When pronouncing this command, the fly player must be outside the field. If the “fly” participant follows all the instructions of the leader correctly, then he himself becomes the leader. If after the words “The fly flew out” the participant “fly” remained on the field, then he gives up his place to the next player. If there are two players, they simply switch places.

Older children can draw a field with a large number of cells. You can also accelerate during the game (say commands faster and faster).

2. Exercises for the development of associative and figurative thinking (5-7 years)

• Encourage your child to come up with new uses for common items. How many uses can you think of, such as for a nail or a juice stick? Ten? Hundred?
• Ask the child to pick up several associations to any word. For example, an orange, what is it? Ripe, juicy, orange, delicious, pips, orange peel, wedges, Vitamin C, lemonade, wood…
• The ancient Egyptians invented the “principle of complementarity”. The most unusual properties can be attributed to an object. So, among the Egyptians, an orange can be both orange and black, and round, and square. Invite the child to pick up incredible properties for some object. Ask him to draw his idea.
• Take an image of any ancient Egyptian papyrus and come up with a decoding story with your child. Just rely on the symbols and use your imagination.

At one time, Natalya Bekhtereva discovered an “error detector” in the brain. This is such a group of cells that reacts to a discrepancy between an event, an action, and a certain pattern. The error detector prevents you from entering novelty, breaking through dogmas, overcoming. Therefore, creative thinking is an endless process of overcoming the error detector.

It is these exercises that allow the child to go beyond the error detector and expand their creative potential.

3. For the development of observation and enrichment of thinking it is useful to simply draw children’s attention to the details around. Point out a bunch of brightly colored balloons at the mall or chirping birds on a tree branch. Wait for the child’s emotions to show. Discuss what you see with him.

Exercises for schoolchildren

1. Schulte tables. Nothing develops attention to detail in the text and reading fluency as well as Schulte tables. To do this, you will need to print several of them (can be easily found on the Internet).

It is better to perform this exercise with someone in a pair. The first participant briefly shows the table to the second and explains: “On this table, the numbers from 1 to 25 are not in order.” Then he quickly puts the table down on the table with the numbers down and gives the instruction: “You need to point to the numbers and call them out loud in order from 1 to 25. It is important to do this as soon as possible, but without errors.”

Then the first participant turns the table over again and places it in front of the second participant (at a distance of 25-30 cm from the face). He completes the task. Excellent result – 30-35 seconds per table; good – 35-45 seconds; satisfactory – 45-55 seconds; low – more than 60 seconds.

2. Visualization of numbers on the board. Sit comfortably in a chair. Close your eyes. Imagine a big blackboard in your mind. And now the numbers are starting to appear on it. Try to silently count from 1 to 10. In the forward and reverse order. And as you count in your mind, each previous figure should, as it were, be erased. Visualize the image of the numbers very clearly and vividly, as if they were written in chalk on a board that has just been rubbed.

This exercise engages the posterior attention system of the brain, which is responsible for concentrating on visual images and the ability to work with imaginary objects.

Exercises for adults

1. Memorization of objects. This exercise is done in pairs. Ask the second participant to prepare two to three dozen small items (pens, erasers, key rings, etc.) and arrange them on the table. You need to carefully look around the objects for 10-15 seconds. Then you close your eyes, and the second participant swaps items and/or adds others. Then you open your eyes and try to notice what has changed.

2. Mnemonics. Have you ever walked into a store and forgot what you were going to buy? Or can’t remember the name of a new acquaintance? In this case, help mnemonics – techniques for remembering information.

To remember phone numbers or pin codes, it is useful to come up with visual images for numbers. For example, you need to remember the number 231. Let’s imagine that one is a stake, two is a swan, and three is waves. In this case, we can make a figurative statement: “231 – The swan sailed away from the stake on the waves.”

If you are learning poetry, then you can draw small pictures in the margins. This is also a variant of mnemonics. For memorization, it is also useful to rhyme words.

Often we need to memorize a complex definition or instruction. Let’s take an example from physics. An ampere is such a direct current that flows through infinitely thin long parallel conductors … It can be difficult to remember all the definitions of these conductors here.

Then we imagine infinity in the form of glasses, and we depict the parallelism of the conductors in the form of a mustache. Conductors can be thought of as a pole with drives. And part of the definition can be rhymed like this: “A constant current in glasses and with a mustache ran along a pole with wires.”

In this case, it is not the exact transfer of meaning that is important, but just the associations that cause this meaning. In this case, we can get full of abracadabra, but because of its strangeness, it helps the brain to better remember the original definition. He reacts very well to strange, unusual things and remembers them better.

It used to be that the human brain functions less intensively with age. We now know that this is not entirely true. In fact, the brain of an elderly person is just different. In the complex intricacies of his connections lies a colossal experience accumulated over decades. This is why older people often think slower: their brains have to process more information, sifting it through their experiences.

Now there is evidence that new brain cells are formed even at 85 years old. Therefore, you can learn new things, train attention, thinking and memory at any age.

Source: I. Martynov “Brain. How it works and what to do with it” (Avanta, 2020).