Brain-Building Fun: Inclusive Games for Families and Kids

Children playing a board game with "Brain-Building Fun" text overlay.

Brain-Building Games

These days, information about building our brains’ capacity and skills seems to be everywhere.

“Change your brain, and you’ll change your life,” they say. Could it be true?

Dr. Amnon Gimpel, who wrote Brain Exercises to Cure ADHD, thinks so.

He believes specific, targeted brain exercises can effectively stimulate permanent brain growth and development.

If we can strengthen our cognitive skills, it is reasonable to believe that our academic skills can also be strengthened.

This is really exciting, especially for those of us helping students of every age with special needs!

Can you guess the best way to exercise the brain? Did you guess play games?

If so, you are right. How fun is that? There are so many brain games that you can play, both new and tried-and-true old ones.

There are hands-on, online, app, and even leisure mental games (like the ones you play on a long drive).

Soon, you will become a pro at including this new approach to building your child’s brain into your regular activities.

Spot It

Also, it is quick, and this game primarily builds visual processing skills, attention, and focus.

Matching Games

Use any type of cards to create your own matching game to build short-term memory and attention.

IQ Link

SmartGames IQ Puzzler Pro is a compact, travel-friendly brain teaser featuring 120 challenges that build logic, problem-solving, and spatial reasoning skills for ages 6 and up.

Mindware Q‑bitz Jr. is a fast-paced, award-winning visual puzzle game where 2–4 players race to recreate pattern cards using wooden cubes and trays—boosting spatial reasoning, memory, and coordination for ages 3–8.

Blink

A quick game that helps build attention and focus, plus visual discrimination, while following multiple, simple directions.

$Math Blast game box with dice, cards, and hourglass$

Math Blast!

Math Blast! is a fast‑paced, educational dice-and-card game where players race against the timer to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems—helping kids aged 8–12 sharpen mental math through fun, competitive gameplay.

Jigsaw Puzzles

Help build strategic planning, visual discrimination, and attention skills. Start with big puzzles (24 pieces or less) and gradually build up.

The games you want to look for are those that help practice and teach the following cognitive skills:

Attention Skills: The ability to attend to incoming tasks using sustained (focused), selective (regardless of distractions), and divided (multi-tasking) attention.

Memory: The ability to store and recall information both in short-term or working memory and in long-term or stored memory.

Logic and Reasoning: The ability to reason, form concepts, and solve problems using unfamiliar information or novel procedures.

Auditory Processing is the ability to analyze, blend, and segment sounds, which is a crucial skill for learning to read.

Visual Processing: The ability to perceive, analyze, discern/discriminate, and think in visual images.

Processing Speed: The ability to perform simple or complex cognitive tasks efficiently and effectively.

Lynda Sloan Allen owns the Make Your Mark in Life Learning Center in Vero Beach, FL. Lynda is the leader of a team of extraordinary tutors who focus on the whole development of the child by developing cognitive, brain and emotional skills along with academics in every tutoring session. Her website is filled with great information: www.makeyourmarklearningcenter.com

This post contains affiliate links, which means Parenting Special Needs LLC could receive a commission if you purchase using this link. We appreciate your support.

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This post originally appeared on our November/December 2014 Magazine