Once they have built up motor planning and sequencing skills at the level of actions and movement, and then at the level of using ideas, children can begin planning out their days, making a visual diagram of what they want to do, tasks and chores, and when they want to do these things. A timeline of the day keeps children on task and on target and improves planning skills.
Motor System Games and Activities
Motor Functioning
Evolution Game: Help the child move up the ladder with progressively more challenging activities, from slithering, crawling, and walking to running, skipping, hopping, and jumping to agility and rhythmic activities.
Modulation Game: The child controls his level of activity - faster and then slower and then superslow and then super-superslow and then from super-superslow back up to fast.
Body Awareness Games: These help create better awareness of different parts of the body and greater awareness of the child's left side and right side.
Balance and Coordination Games: These are very Important factors In focus and attention.
Fine Motor Exercises: These hand and finger exercises encourage close focus and attention. Spouse With ADD
Motor Planning and Sequencing
Simon Says or Copycat Games: Motor-related copycat games and rhythmic activities, like marching or dancing to music together, can start simply and increase in complexity.
Treasure-Hunt Games: These can involve verbal or visual clues of increasing complexity to find a desired prize at the end.
Obstacle-Course Games: In order to find a hidden object the child has to negotiate an obstacle course requiring multistep actions.
Road Maps and Timelines: Children can make visual diagrams of what and when they want to do a certain activity, chore, and so forth during the day or throughout the week.
Higher Levels of Planning and Sequencing: There are many different forms of higher-level planning and sequencing, from complex movements and actions to fine motor aspects, as In sculpting and drawing, to the visual and verbal planning in writing an essay or play or composing music.
Higher Levels of Planning and Sequencing
After children reach the fundamental levels of being able to plan and sequence their actions, they will need eventually to get to the advanced levels required in school. Planning and sequencing are needed in carrying out homework assignments and composing an essay, for example. Organizing a research paper and planning an experiment require even more complex sequencing and planning.
Often, we see children who have good memories and do very well in the early grades of school when everything - the basic math facts or word recognition - can be pretty well mastered through memorization.
These children can be good readers, as well. But when it comes to more advanced work, they begin to have difficulties. Sometimes this shows up in writing assignments, and at times it can be handled through the use of their strong memory skills. However, in high school and college, when the work is more demanding, these star students may cease to shine because they haven't mastered fundamental planning and sequencing skills.
Other students who have these skills, but have weaker memories, may start shining in the later grades. It's not that their abilities have changed; it's that the rules governing what is required have changed. Thus, there is no substitute for strengthening this ability right at the beginning when children are first learning how to sequence their thoughts. Creative thinking is also important at an early stage.
Essay Writing. One way to help a child who has to write an essay for school is to have him create a visual diagram with little boxes, with a few words about what he wants to cover in each box, leading up to his main idea in a big box. Use little arrows down to boxes with the supporting points and then a box for the conclusion. Then see if he can write the essay using the visual design. Spouse With ADD
Creative Thinking. Creative thinking, whether in pretend play or in creating a drama or a story, involves many complex actions woven all together. The grand epic is very different from the simple soap opera. Enjoy your child's creations and always be curious about them. Encourage more and more ideas. Gee, that is fascinating - any other thoughts. If the child switches topics suddenly and you are confused, help the child be logical and stay focused: "Whoa! I'm lost here. You were telling me about these new magical creatures you wanted to create on the Internet, and now you are talking about a computer game. How do these connect?"
The child might say, "Well, silly, the magical creatures are part of the new Internet game I'm creating called ..." All of a sudden it all comes together because you have challenged your child to make sense and stay focused while being creative. Then you challenge him even further to give you more reasons that something makes sense, in complex ways. Then the child can progress to the higher levels of thinking, like gray-area and reflective thinking, which we discussed earlier.
Visual-Spatial Sequencing. The sequencing can occur verbally, as we have just illustrated with creative play, but it can also occur in the visual-spatial worlds, such as mathematical sequencing in understanding complex forms of algebra and calculus. It also occurs by learning to apply scientific and mathematical principles to new problems in which you have to take a logical approach.
Being an artist or a sculptor involves planning and sequencing, too - how you are going to transfer the image that you created in your mind to paper or with sculpting materials.
Music.
Music is another form of sequencing ideas - for example, in composing. Many children diagnosed with ADHD or ADD early in their lives are gifted musically. I've seen one such child compose symphonies, Higher levels of thinking all involve the sequencing of ideas. Planning a new dance involves thinking at a different level, visualizing how it is going to play out in combination with a musical score. To learn more, you can check out Spouse With ADD.
