Elaborate toys, busy schedules and video games have left children with fewer opportunities for imaginative play. Researchers say changing the way children play has changed their emotional and cognitive development. Neuroscientist Adele Diamond and psychologist Deborah Leong have good news by “The best kind of play costs nothing and really only has one main requirement: imagination.”

When children learn to rely on themselves for playtime by improvising props, and making up games and stories, they’re actually developing critical cognitive skills, including an important one called “executive function,” they say.

Executive function is the ability to regulate one’s own behavior, a key skill for controlling emotions, resisting impulses and exerting self-control and discipline. Is our culture rewiring our children’s brains so they have trouble focusing?

How to focus

Children especially ages two through eight can develop an ability to focus and stay on task. One way is through imaginative play. That means providing opportunities for young children to pretend. When children pretend to play house or store, act out “Avengers,” make forts, play Legos, cars, dolls, princess, jungle rescue, or have a talent show, they zero in for a long, long time on an activity. Children make up their own problems and solve them. They control their own thoughts and impulses. That is focus.

Helping children to focus can be cheap and easy. Provide a pile of leaves, a tarp to keep leaves contained, small leaf rakes, and a garbage can. Help kids get started raking not as a job but as playtime. One child rakes leaves onto a tarp. The second puts them in a garbage can, and the third smashes the leaves with a croquet mallet. They are playing leaf smasher. When the children are finished playing, the adults roll up the leaves in the tarp.

Another time show the kids how to make a leaf space ship, which could easily be a fort, house, hospital, or castle with rooms and doorways. on a tarp. The children can play “Star Wars,” chase imaginary bad guys around, and save people. Imagination has endless possibilities. When the leaves are finally just bits and pieces, the tarp makes an easy clean up.

What really happens

Without any technology or great expense, children are having a great time learning and organizing themselves. They are acting out stories and adding little creative twists and turns. Most important the frontal lobes of their brains are learning how to focus on a task. Encourage children to act out stories you read to them. Provide a box of dress up playtime clothes. October is the perfect time to collect cheap costumes, hats, and props. Adults and children can make costumes from cardboard, duct tape, and markers.

For more ideas, go to grandparentsteachtoo.blogspot.com; wnmufm.org/Learning Through the Seasons; Facebook; Pinterest.