Back to School Tune Up!

For Homeschoolers & Parents

Back to School Tune Up!

Increasing Cognitive Processing Speed Through Game Play
By Aneta Michalczuk – VP of Sharp As A Tack, Inc.

As parents and teachers begin to plan their back-to-school transition, I wanted to get on your radar with a fun, game-based approach to learning. Cognitive processing speed is critical to students’ ability and capacity to learn. Games such as Spot it, Super Circles, Call It, Buck Buck Moose and particularly, Jungle Speed - a fast and furious game of quick thinking and lightning fast reflexes - will have students at any grade level involved in exciting, stimulating fun, and they won’t even know they’re developing important cognitive skills that will serve them well throughout their lifespan!

Recent research has acknowledged the significant benefits that board games have, not only on a child’s cognitive development and their brain’s motor functions, but also on important life skills such as patience, cooperation, concentration, teamwork and perseverance. Offering children fun, stimulating board games such as Jungle Speed can give them an advantage when heading back to school this fall.

It’s just this kind of approach that the Sharp as a Tack organization is incorporating as a viable educational tool in their national after-school programs. With a mission to help students improve academic achievement by developing their cognitive abilities and to help them develop those important life skills that will lead to a lifetime of successes in the classroom, in the community and within their families, the program puts a major focus on cognitive processing speed.

According to President and founder Jason Pine, the ability to process information quickly and efficiently and more importantly, make sound decisions based off that information is crucial to student success in and out of the classroom. He notes that Jungle Speed, along with other games they use, helps students develop and strengthen their cognitive speed while playing games and having fun with their peers.

"We find that the game play enhances many cognitive functions, including visual discrimination, visual span, visual processing speed, visual-motor integration and visual sustained attention," he says. "It is astounding how much progress each student makes in terms of cognitive processing speed in just one session! You can see the transformation in their eyes and body language. We (Sharp As A Tack) are launching research this fall to take a closer look at the effects of game play on cognitive processing speed."

Please visit the links below to learn more about Jungle Speed and other games that develop students’ cognitive processing speed and get their minds ready for school.

Cognitive Processing Speed Games

With programs nationally, Sharp As A Tack's mission is to improve students' cognitive abilities and academic achievement through non-technological game play through before/after-school programming and professional development workshops and seminars with educators.

A secondary mission of Sharp As A Tack is to foster an environment that will help improve students’ self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence, as well as to provide a venue to develop interpersonal skills such as communication, cooperation, teamwork and leadership. For more information, please contact Jason Pine at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .