Learning life skills through play  Boost your child's ability to
plan, think flexibly, inhibit responses, and monitor our
actions, among many other skills, through play.  Learning Stages
By Jody Sherman LeVos, Ph.D.  LeapFrog Math Expert   What are
executive functions? Executive functions are a set of mental
processes thought to be responsible for our ability to plan,
think flexibly, inhibit responses and monitor our actions, among
many other skills. Anytime you rehearse a new phone number or
resist the impulse to eat a cookie while you’re on a diet,
you’re using parts of the executive system.  In the classroom,
children call upon their executive functioning skills in many
ways. A child who resists the urge to shout out the answer when
another classmate is called on is using executive functioning to
inhibit a response. A child who starts a homework assignment
during free time so that she can watch TV later is using
executive functioning to plan and delay gratification. The
kindergartner who memorizes a serie