TIPS FOR GROWING: Edition 18- Tools for Teens … Brain Boosters!
04.21.2025
TOPIC: Brain Boosters
Activities & Tools for Use During the Teen Years
Welcome to the Eighteenth Edition of Tips For Growing! These blog posts will focus on important clinical topics that are regularly encountered when working with children.
Today’s "Tips For Growing" will focus on Brain Boosters for use during the teen years and how Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy can help!.
We hope these seeds of information will help with the most important job there is . . . helping children grow.
What are Brain Boosters?
It is known that during the teenage years, adolescents have many complex demands placed upon them. They are navigating difficult social situations, expected to complete complicated school projects, participate in after school obligations, and may even become a part time employee. Although teens do not have the executive functioning skills of an adult, they are expected to learn many new skills while being both flexible and organized.
To help teens learn and adapt with flexibility, therapists may engage their students in what have been described as Brain Boosters. Brain Boosters are activities and tools that promote thinking, learning and problem-solving.
Specific areas that may be targeted include:
- Memory
- Selective attention & concentration
- Focus & alertness
- Energy & movement
- Emotions & mood
- Creativity
Brain Boosters for Teens: How Occupational Therapy & Speech Therapy Can Help
There are many creative and engaging activities that can be offered to teens that can benefit these targeted areas.
Here are some examples:
Journaling
Teens can benefit from tools that help with focusing their time, energy, and actions toward positive goals. One strategy is the use of a personal journal. Reflection journaling may help inhibit impulsiveness and give teens a tool to reflect upon past and future actions. By exploring and then recording their thoughts and feelings, a teen may focus on making positive and healthy choices. Gratitude journaling can offer teens an opportunity to consider the positive aspects of their life and hopefully achieve greater feelings of fulfillment. This in turn can help boost a teen’s “availability” for learning and overall adaptive functioning.
Monitoring Emotions & Goal Setting
By facilitating a teen’s ability to set goals, therapists are promoting self-regulation which is an important adaptive function. Whether the teen’s goal is to buy a computer or try out for the school play, a therapist can offer strategies that help with planning, progress monitoring, and modifying their efforts to reach a desired outcome. To help with resilience, therapists can offer activities that help a teen identify negative emotions and mal-adaptive reactions to challenging events. Instead, teens can be empowered to “try another way” by adjusting with more positive and effective reactions.
Self Care
Another way to help a teen remain focused and alert is to support efforts to engage in healthy self care. Therapists can provide tools to track habits such as diet, sleep, and exercise which may promote a healthier lifestyle for optimal brain power. Other self care endeavors that may encourage positive emotions include plant care/gardening, reading a book, listening to music, caring for a pet, taking a bath, or simply walking!
Creative Endeavors, Games & Puzzles
Creativity is associated with solving problems and critical thinking, both of which are important to learning and adaptive skills. Participation in games that can be helpful are those that encourage exploration of different perspectives, moving the body in new and unique ways, following muti-stepped novel directions, challenging the memory, and alerting oneself by engaging in energetic physical activity. Establishing a creative learning environment can help a teen feel more secure and joyful. The use of music, drawing, painting, dancing and/ or yoga may encourage self expression. This may be motivating to a teen and they may in turn become more actively involved in the learning process. Jigsaw and other types of puzzles may boost a teen’s cognitive processes by challenging their visual perception, constructional praxis, reasoning, and flexibility.
Problem Solving
Teens with strong problem solving abilities may possess greater self confidence and therefore the capacity for increased success at home, school, work and during leisure time. Regarding problem solving, while teens should be encouraged to take the initiative to persevere with challenging tasks, it is also very important for them to learn to ask for assistance or guidance when warranted. While at work, incorrectly completed job tasks can be costly or even dangerous. To help a teen build judgment and problem solving skills, therapists may offer goal setting activities which help a student break down a future goal into manageable steps. Encouraging the use of a teen’s imagination can help them think “outside the box” to solve problems. One brain boosting idea is to have the teen create a new picture from an existing image. To solve problems it is always advantageous for a teen to have strong time management skills. Offering activities that allow a teen to mentally plan a sequence of actions based upon time constraints can help in this area.
Language Activities
Therapists may boost a student’s brain power through the use of analogies which are known to offer cognitive benefits. Analogies may improve learning by connecting new information to familiar concepts. It is known that novel information is more readily remembered if it has an existing context with which to connect. This is known as association. Another language based activity that can be used with teens is promoting their ability to make inferences. Making inferences helps teens analyze information to make conclusions based upon evidence. The practice of developing inferential reasoning can boost critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making. Other language brain boosting activities include telling jokes, learning song lyrics, and reciting tongue twisters.
Memory Boosters
Activities that promote a teen’s visual, auditory and working memory have a positive impact on brain power. Auditory memory refers to the ability to recall information that is heard. This type of memory is crucial for understanding and following directions, comprehending conversations, and overall success in school. Brain boosting games that require the participant to recall a sequence of auditory information includes the “Telephone Game” (recalling and repeating a message to a team mate), “Simon Says” (following commands related to body actions), or “Pizza Game” (recalling unique pizza orders). Teens may also try to recognize the source of a sound from a recording.
Visual memory, also known as mental picture taking, refers to the ability to remember what was seen. This type of memory includes the retention and retrieval of visual information such as objects, faces, written information, colors, symbols, and complex scenes. Visual memory is a key part of visual perception and plays a highly significant role in academic learning and everyday functioning to interact with the world. Brain boosting games and activities that require visual memory include jigsaw puzzles, checkers, chess, concentration, and “I Spy”.
Are you looking for resources for teens that can promote thinking, learning and problem solving? If so, Tools To Grow has done the work for you!
Brain Booster Resources Include:
(1) Handwriting & Functional Motor Skills + Effective Communication
- What is a Brain Booster? Poster
- Create a Picture
- Printing & Following Directions
- Goal Setting & Planning
- Analogies
- Find it Here!
(2) Life Skills:
- Self Care Jar - Writing
- Self Care Jar - Cut & Paste
- Making Inferences
- Find it Here!
(3) Executive Functions:
- Brain Booster Card Game
- Visual Memory
- Time management
- Find it Here!
(4) Social Emotional Skills:
- Daily Journal
- Weekly Journal
- How do you feel? Emotion Check
- Find it Here!
(5) Typing & Digital Fun!
- Adobe PDF Resources: Goal Setting
- Google Slides: Goal Setting
Executive Functioning Tools
Executive Function is a term used to describe the many tasks one's brain performs that are necessary to think, act, and solve problems. Executive functioning includes tasks that help us learn new information, remember and retrieve information we've learned in the past, and use this information to solve problems of everyday life.
Tools to Grow is pleased to offer many tools under the following Executive Functioning Categories:
- Educational Resources
- Executive Functioning Games
- Home Routines
- Map Skills
- Planning & Organizing
- Ruler Skills
- Time Management
- Working Memory
>> View Brain Booster Packet Here!
>> View Executive Functioning Resources Here!
>> View Emotional Control Resources Here!
We hope these seeds of information will help with the most important job there is . . . helping children grow.
Kind regards,
Patti & Shelley
Your Team at Tools to Grow, Inc.
Related Topics: School Based OT, Therapy Session Plans , Tips for Growing , Tools for TEENS
