Resources

Let's SING to LEARN! If you have been to any of my executive function workshops, you know I love to sing songs with students to teach them about their self-regulation, attention, memory, planning, and cognitive flexibility. Moving and singing in time with peers provides a valuable opportunity to practice beat competency, self-regulation, and focused attention. Music naturally engages multiple attention and memory systems simultaneously. When cognitive skill lessons are embedd

Just in case my newsletter today didn't reach you, here is what I shared with our executive function community. Good Day Colleagues, It's a beautiful day for sharing resources with you all to support children's cognition and learning. We finished our Executive Function curriculum for the classroom. It's heading to the publisher for design. Can't wait to share that with you. I hired a wonderful artist to design the "My Attention Engine" storybook that goes with our FREE Exe

One of my favorite topics to discuss with students is the importance of their Attention Engines. We wrote a song about this, and we now have a downloadable lyrics book to accompany it. Soon, we will also publish a children's book with a story you can read with your students. I'll never forget the day I sang the chorus to Attention Engine with a student, and he replied with a hand on his hips, "Dr. Lynne, why didn't anyone ever tell me about my attention cycle?" Click the imag

Every student knows the feeling: you're sitting in class, trying to pay attention, and suddenly you realize you have no idea what the teacher just said. Your mind wandered off to lunch, or last weekend, or that thing your friend said at recess. And then comes the familiar thought: What makes me so distracted? Here's what every child—and every teacher—needs to know:   Attention shifts from moment to moment. When you raise your awareness of when you are focused and why your bra

Visual Processing Skills: Building Blocks for Learning and Development Visual processing encompasses a sophisticated set of cognitive abilities that allow children to make sense of the visual world around them. These skills work together as an integrated system, enabling everything from reading and writing to navigating playground equipment and solving math problems. Understanding these skills helps educators, clinicians, and parents recognize both strengths and areas where c

According to the American Optometric Association (AOA), approximately 25% (1 in 4) of all children have a vision problem significant enough to impact their learning. While exact numbers vary, studies suggest around 3-4%  of children have significant visual processing deficits like Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) or Nonverbal Learning Disability (NVLD), though some estimates place general vision problems affecting learning as high as 10-15%, and even higher (30-60%) in childr

Deep Pressure & Vestibular Input Help Children Calm When children become dysregulated in the classroom, their brains are telling us something important: the demands of the moment have exceeded their current capacity to cope. Dysregulation isn't a failure of character or a choice to misbehave-it's a neurological reality. The child's brain has detected a threat, whether that's sensory overload, cognitive overwhelm, social stress, or physical discomfort, and has automatically sh

Physical activity, neuroplasticity, and brain growth are interconnected elements in childhood development. Regular physical activity stimulates neural growth and strengthens connections between brain regions, enhancing cognitive function, learning ability, and emotional regulation. Our students need to physically move 2-5 minutes every 45 minutes in class to prime the brain for learning. Our next book about movement, music, and cognition will include over 50 activities for yo

Steven G. Feifer D.Ed. Shared with the permission of Jack Hirose & Associates According to a recent survey conducted by the Canadian Mental Health and Access to Care (2022), more than 5 million Canadians were experiencing symptoms of mental illness in the aftermath of the world-wide pandemic.  Unfortunately, the mental health of children was disproportionately impacted by the pandemic as well, due primarily to extended disruptions in education, as well as forced social distan

Cognitivities Help Children Self-Regulate The human brain and music share an ancient relationship. When humans listen to or engage with music, multiple brain regions activate simultaneously in a neural symphony of their own (Toader et al., 2023). This is particularly significant for children as their brains are in an important period of development, forming neural connections at an astonishing rate, particularly in areas related to language, emotional regulation, and executiv

Lynne Kenney, PsyD Reading requires a complex interplay between cognitive, sensory, and motor processes. Sensory motor skills are fundamental to developing good reading skills in elementary school because reading involves more than just decoding letters and words on a page. Sensory motor skills are those that involve the coordination of movement with sensory input, such as eye-hand coordination, gross and fine motor skills, and spatial awareness. Initial sensory-motor develop

Teachers, clinicians, and parents are often looking for simple and effective ways to help children practice self-regulation, self-control, attention, and response inhibition; skill sets essential to successful learning and behavior. Self-regulation is the ability to manage one's thoughts, behaviors, and emotions to achieve goal-directed prosocial behaviors. Children’s ability to self-regulate (exercise control over their dominant impulses; calm themselves when over-energized)

Over the past 20 years, we have developed engaging cognitive-motor & executive function activities to help clinicians and educators who work with neurodiverse children to stimulate self-regulation, self-control, response inhibition, attention, and memory. Current studies on the relationship between executive function and emergent academic skills in preschoolers, kindergartners, and older children have shown that executive function significantly relates to both mathematics and