Executive Function Consultation, Education and Skills (EXCEL) Clinic Resources

Apps for Emotion Regulation - Mindfulness or Relaxation

This app guides breathing with visual and verbal instructions that can be modified to choose a voice, tempo, and duration of the exercises.

This app provides a variety of guided meditation and relaxation modules for stress, anxiety, panic, overwhelm, sleep, etc. The modules range from 1 to 30 mins in length.

Oak supports meditation, breathing and sleep. The app is highly customizable, tracks progress and is frequently updated.

The website contains a list of publicly-available mental health apps, including ones designed for teens, which have been rated by scientific experts in terms of their credibility (strength of scientific research), usability, and transparency with data/privacy. It updates over time to account for new apps and new research findings.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation Value from Software, LLC. provides visual and verbal instructions that can be modified to choose a voice, tempo, and duration of the exercises.


Apps for Inhibition

The player must smash the correct avocado while avoiding whacking wrong avocados. Focus on details, avoid distraction and quickly make the best choice.


Apps for Organization and Time Management

Offers To Do list, calendars, reminders and a daily planner all in one location. Works with Siri, Alexa, Google assistant, Apple smartwatches and Google smartwatches.

Use this app to quickly note down and "beat" all your everyday tasks. Players can repeat tasks and gain loot and go up levels based on tasks completed. Available for Apple and Android.

Helps with memory and productivity. Can take notes and pictures, create to-do lists, scan business cards, and record voice reminders. Can organize everything by tags so searching for saved information is easier. Available for Apple and Android.

Offers assignments, planner, organizer, and settings sections, can add important information from multiple calendars.

Use this iPhone app to organize schedules, homework and other assignments; put in upcoming assignments and check off once completed; and add instructors and their contact info. For students in 4th to 8th grade.

A to-do list for Apple and Android. Can set frequency of reminders, add different lists, add locations, add people to whom to send the lists.

This is a list-making, organizational tool app and website. There is a free and subscription version available.


Apps for Problem-Solving

Players need to apply frequently changing rules to give differently colored aliens the right food or drink they need to survive. Available for Apple and Android.

Young child friendly! In this game you must serve customers quickly and efficiently and make decisions both inside and outside the restaurant. Game includes problem solving, strategy and flexibility. Throughout the game several goals are given in different scenarios. You must achieve the goal in order to move to the next level. Available for Apple and Android.

A young child-friendly problem solving game where you move objects in a grid/maze to reach a goal. Levels become increasingly more challenging.

The player must detangle a set of ropes in a limited number of moves, moving only one rope at a time. The levels become increasingly more challenging.

This is a puzzle/problem solving game for younger children. The player must move obstacles and use tools to clear a path to get a key to the next level.

Children practice problem solving skills to get the water to the shower by using strategy and digging tunnels in the proper direction. Available for Apple and Android.


Apps for Speech to Text

Use Google Docs to start voice typing in a document.

Office 365, 2019 and 2021 have a Read Aloud option where text is turned into speech and someone can listen to what has been written. Consider using this tool when proofreading writing assignments, as it is often easier to catch errors when something is read out loud.

This voice recognition software turns speech into text. The text can be translated into multiple languages. The app costs $4.99 per month.


Apps for Studying and Notetaking

These free customizable templates can be saved for future reference. The graphic organizers are appropriate for older students who are comfortable with customization.

Graphic organizers provide a visual way to organize information. These templates are great examples of free templates to print out.

Seamlessly switch between typing, drawing/writing, adding images, and audio recording. 

This Apple and Android app helps you create, organize, manage flash cards and use cards others have created.


Apps for Sustained Attention

Cartoon presentation may be more engaging for younger children as they focus on details and notice differences between pictures.

This iPhone app shows two pictures that look similar but have various differences. Players must find the differences between the two. It provides 50 different levels and 10 differences in each level that help children sustain attention and limit distractions.


Books

Learn about executive function (EF) and how EF skills contribute to success in school, at home and in work environments; and find instructions, templates, and how-to scenarios.

Emphasizes the need for helping children manage demands in the short run and build independent skills for long-term self-management. Includes information about executive functions and offers specific intervention strategies for children of different ages, varying needs and profiles.

This book leads readers through explanations and exercises that will improve daily living skills, including time, space and memory, and advances to topics such as project management, decision-making and negotiating obstacles.

This book demonstrates the ways kids use executive functions in school, at home and in their other activities and shows how these skills can be improved through sustained effort. It also provides teens with tools and tips for improving executive functions.


Educational and Social Resources for Patients and Families

The Oncology Psychosocial Services Team at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has prepared this handbook to provide you with information for transitioning your child with cancer back to school.

Provides resources to families struggling with mental health and learning disorders, and empower parents, professionals and policymakers to support children when and where they need it most.

Find information about executive function and self-regulation skills from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

Uses video games and other digital technologies to improve focus, flexibility, organization, planning, self-awareness, self-control, time management, and working memory in children with learning difficulties and related diagnoses.

Provides resources for young people with a disability considering employment, and helps families find a Parent Training and Information Center (PTI) or a Community Parent Resource Center (CPRC) in their area that offer information about early intervention, school services, therapy, local policies, transportation, and much more.

Part of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, Understood offers information about learning and attention issues, school and learning and many other helpful topics related to learning difficulties.

Provides accurate, up-to-date information about special education law and advocacy for children with disabilities.