Cognitive Developmental Therapy
Our cognitive developmental activities help children overcome specific challenges in their cognitive and academic skills, social interactions, emotional-behavioral reactions, and gross-fine motor skills. As children learn best through play, we tailor specific experiential activities for our little thinkers to explore through trial-and-error opportunities. Our goal is to ensure that each child’s growth occurs smoothly and fully, while minimizing learning gaps that interfere with their overall development.
Cultivating Self-Confidence and the Desire to Learn
Guiding children to adopt an internal “I can” and “I’m able” outlook prepares them when they are met with difficult or unfamiliar situations. Our Thinking Games play a crucial part in fostering curiosity and result in meaningful “ah-ha” experiences that nurture children’s interest in learning and mitigate the reluctance that often comes with developmental challenges. Through these hands-on activities, children gain skills that can be applied to their daily lives, helping them improve interactions with others and their environment.
A Proactive Approach that Builds Authentic Self-Confidence
Unlike traditional play therapy, cognitive developmental activities are a hands-on approach that tailors specific thinking games to help children overcome certain challenges and improve the quality of interactions with their environment. Confidence is gained from “ah-ha” experiences as the child explores thinking games that target a particular area of need, and gain awareness of the what, where, who, when, and how’s behind each task. This encourages a belief in their own ability to learn and further apply the skills acquired to everyday life.
What Activities are Used?
Our Thinking Games utilize Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development to ensure smooth, continuous flow from one stage to the next, enriching each child’s development and learning. The activities are comprehensive and multidimensional to cover the various needs of each child, and include the following:
- Cognitive-Logical Skills: Logical Thinking Games give children the opportunity for trial-and-error exploration to fully comprehend why a solution may or may not work. The ability to think logically is the foundation for all critical thinking skills, and facilitates higher-level reasoning that is needed in all areas of life, whether academically, socially, or interpersonally. To learn more, visit our Logical Thinking Activities.
- Gross-Fine Motor Skills: General and Discriminative Movement Thinking Games facilitate building and mastering the body awareness and control needed for balance and efficient movement. To learn more, visit our General & Discriminative Movement Thinking Activities.
- Visual-Spatial Skills: Visual Thinking Games help children to interpret what they see and to manipulate that interpretation visual-spatially, which is required in many life competencies and especially needed in math and science. To learn more, visit our Visual Thinking Activities.
- Hand-Tactile Sensory Awareness Skills: Hand Thinking Games help to differentiate various tactile experiences, such as texture and shape. Having this tactile perception and awareness adds to overall thinking abilities. While Graphic Thinking Games improve the arm-hand-finger-visual processes that are needed for drawing, coloring within the boundaries, cutting on the line, or writing smoothly and legibly. To learn more, visit our Hand Thinking Activities and Graphic Thinking Activities.
- Language-Communication Skills: Auditory Thinking Games improve the interpretation and discrimination of specific sounds unique to a language. This allows a child to utilize and sequence various sounds in a meaningful way that is needed for speaking, reading, and spelling. To learn more, visit our Auditory Thinking Activities.
- Social-Emotional Skills: Social Thinking Games provide opportunities to understand others’ perspectives, build empathy, expand social skills, and develop healthy self-expressions while children solve problems to social situations. To learn more, visit our Social Thinking Activities.
- Toddlers – Pre-Operational Stage, 2-4 years old
- Little Kids – Pre-Operational Stage, 4-7 years old
- Big Kids – Concrete Operations Stage, 7-11 years old
- Tweens – Formal Operations Stage, 11-14 years old
- Adolescents – Formal Operations Stage, 14-18 years old
Schedule an Initial Evaluation
Get in touch with our team to set up an evaluation for your child.
Participate in Social Thinking Group
We offer social thinking groups for children struggling with social development.
Take Developmental Skills Test
Not sure if treatment is right for your child? Take our online developmental skills test.
