Dynseo is involved in helping children. Our goal is to give all children the same resources and opportunities to have a good development.
Children with ADHD have difficulty concentrating, which can manifest itself as inattention, hyperactivity or impulsiveness.
These difficulties have an impact on the daily life of the children, at different levels: with the family, at school and on a social level.
Here is a summary table to help you see which games can help a child with ADHD, depending on their needs.
COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES app: an educational apps for ADHD children
Dynseo has developed an app adapted to children from 5 to 10 years old with cognitive disorders: COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES.
The COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES can be used at home, with the parents or independently, at school or during sessions if the child is followed by a professional. You don’t need wifi to use this app, so it can be used everywhere and everytime.
The COCO app is a programme with more than 30 educational games to work on cognitives functions such as attention, memory, language, organization etc. Each game has 3 levels of difficulty to allow better adaptation to the children’s skills.
To allow for customization, Dynseo provides technical sheets to find the most suitable games according to the needs and skills of the child. On the sheets you can find the rules of the game, the modes available and the cognitive functions stimulated.
Today children with ADHD often have medical traitements. With COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES, Dynseo offers a non-medical alternative to help and support children with ADHD in their development.
TYPES OF ADHD
ADHD is a disorder that mainly affects attention, but every child is different and its symptoms can be varied as well.
In general, there are 3 characteristics that can be proven or not, and more or less severe.
INATTENTION
When a child has difficulty focusing, the first cognitive function affected is attention. Children with ADHD may have difficulty completing a task they have started, they may switch quickly from one activity to another, and they may forget things to do. This inattention can happen both at home and at school.
It is very important to not criticize the child for forgetting, but help him to find compensation strategies and finish the task he started.
Twins
In this game the child has to look at the cards and memorize their position. The cards are then turned over and the child has to find the pairs of cards like in the memory game.
This game stimulates the child’s attention when he has to memorize the position of the cards. Once they have found a pair of pictures, the cards are removed from the screen: this way, the child can see their progress in the game and is not distracted by the cards they have already found. In addition, this game also stimulates memory and the creation of mental images.
Crazy Waterfall
In this game, the child has to find the difference between the model and the proposed image sequence.
In this game, focused attention is stimulated. We also work on saccadic eye movement and visual perception, two important cognitive functions, especially when they are comorbid with dyslexia.
Coco at the beach
In this game, the activity is divided into 5 rounds with a break between each part ( the child rests between two parts and stays focused during the game ). In this form, the game stimulates focused attention, but also helps the child to learn how to manage his concentration, his activity time and his rest time.
IMPULSIVITY
When a child is impulsive, he does not wait until the end of conversation with another person to answer or start an activity. This sometimes causes a misunderstanding of instructions and can lead to difficulties in completing the task. He can often interrupt a dialogue and thus can irritate. At the motor level, the child may act without thinking about the consequences, and, in this case, may put himself in danger if he cannot foresee the risk. In the case of impulsivity, the disorder is due to a difficulty in inhibiting thought or action.
Moles invasion
In this game, the child will see 3 different moles, and therefore 3 different stimuli. A normal one that he has to tap/ hit once, another one with a helmet that he has to top twice, and finally, a last one with glasses that he has to leave alone.
In this game, the activation and inhibition of movement is stimulated according to the stimulus. The child can learn to adapt to its environment, to take external information to choose which movement to make.
Pop balloons
In this game, the child has to shoot arrows and hit the balloons according to the instructions.
In this game, there is no question of speed, but the child must watch the movement of the balloons and wait for the right moment to shoot. He has to stop the movement and wait for the right moment to shoot. The child has to blow up only the balloons of one color, so it is very important to read the instructions carefully before starting the game.
Snowball effect
In this game, the child has to press a single arrow to throw a snowball that must hit all the arrows on the screen. The child cannot press the arrow he sees on the screen, he has to think carefully before acting. Thanks to this game, the cause-and-effect is stimulated, so he thinks about the consequences of an action.
HYPERACTIVITY
When an ADHD child is hyperactive, there are signs of motor activity. The child is always on the move, he cannot sit still and make “unnecessary” movements. We can see, for example, that when he runs to shoot a ball, he also moves all his body and arms excessively. In general, movements are uncoordinated. Also in terms of activity/task to be done, we can observe difficulties of organization, the child fiddles with objects and cannot stay focused a long time on an activity.
The Musical Ear
In this game, the child had to listen to sounds or instruments, and recognize them.
The child does not have to stay in front of the tablet, but he has to pay attention to the sounds he hears. With this activity, you can stimulate attentions and auditory discrimination. In addition, to give the answer, the child has to be in front of the screen and press the good answer. There will be a spontaneous return to the tablet.
Shapebox
In this game, the child has to recognise shapes or colors according to the pattern.
The pattern changes each turn, so you stimulate attention with the instructions. You have to wait until the correct shape is exactly in the central area before you can press the button, so you stimulate inhibition of activation and adaptation to the external environment.
Simili
In this game the child has to find the duplicate picture among the pictures offered.
With this game you stimulate the activation and inhibition of the action because the child has to be quick, but also has to analyze all the pictures. In this game, the child has to stay next to the tablet to give the answer, but the quick change from one shape to another allows the child to sit still for longer.
Finally, with this game you also stimulate the saccadic eye movement and hand-eye coordination which are important when there is a comorbidity with Dys disorders.
HOW TO CHANNEL AN HYPERACTIVE CHILD’S ATTENTION?
As we have seen in this article, ADHD children often have attention problems and difficulties in controlling their movement. These difficulties have an influence on the child’s daily life, but the environment can be adapted to the child’s needs.
ADHD children are easily distracted, so the first important thing is to create a calm and clean environment. At home you can put things away so that they are not in sight. At school you can ask the child to be away from the windows or the door so that he/she is not distracted.
Another tip is to create a routine with fixed times for the main activities of the day. For example, waking up, eating, homework and bedtime should always be the same. This routine gives ADHD children temporary cues that help them to be more organized and to carry out activities in order.
Finally, it is important to have rules that can help the child to behave appropriately in different situations. The rules do not have to be negative (e.g. “no running in the house”) but they can be positive, e.g. “in the house we walk slowly”. You should know that for ADHD children it is difficult to control their movement and it is not enough to say the rules once. You have to be patient and repeat the rules several times with the child.
THE SPORTS BREAK
For ADHD children, the major difficulties are therefore in movements and in the ability to wait.
In the Coco app, every 15 minutes of screen use, the app stops and suggests a dynamic break.
ADHD children live in a frenetic world and for them sitting or concentrating requires a lot of effort. With this break they can take a break from their frenetic world and do structured activities.
1,2,3 Statue
In this game the child has to move to the music and stop when the music stops.
With this game, the child can move and therefore exercise. They have to pay attention to the music and stop when the music stops. He can therefore learn to adapt to external stimuli.
This break is another solution to adapt the environment to the needs of the children, creating a balance between the increasingly sedentary society in which they live and the need for children to move.
FOLLOW-UP
Targeted training and follow-up can help the child learn to manage his or her behaviour. The child will still have ADHD, but with strategies that allow him to adapt to everyday situations.
In the COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES app it is possible to follow the evolution over time. For each game you can see the scores obtained and the time spent on the activity. Having information about the time is as important as the result, especially for children with ADHD, for whom time management is difficult.
For children with ADHD it is very important to have positive feedback because they don’t always feel they fit in and they always get negative feedback from their environment. Being able to feel capable and see their progress influences their mood.
Discover the COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES app
The COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES app contains more than 30 educational games to work on English, math, logic, memory or attention.
In addition, the application imposes a sports break every 15 minutes of screen time to teach a measured use of screens.
Much smarter than a parental control!
Here are the technical sheets for all the games presented, with the cognitive functions stimulated by game
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