Best Tips for Using Cognitive Worksheets
Have you printed out some of HappyNeuron Pro’s cognitive worksheets to use with your clients? Want to know some tips on how to use them? Look no further! In this blog post, we share our best tips for using HappyNeuron Pro’s cognitive worksheets.
1. As An Individual Activity
While working one-on-one with your client, you may want to try new activities off the books. HappyNeuron Pro provides therapists with a library of colorful, challenging, and interactive worksheets that they can do one-on-one with their clients to practice cognitive skills. At the end of each worksheet is a set of bridging questions, which you may use to foster discussion between you and your client regarding the generalization of their practiced cognitive skills to the real world. You can use the worksheets at any point during your session with your client as either a warmup or a designated cognitive activity.
2. As A Group Activity
Cognitive activities can be social. Using HappyNeuron Pro’s worksheets, you can have clients partner up with each other and problem solve together in mini-groups. This will allow your clients to practice social skills such as listening, paying attention, collaborative brainstorming, asking questions, and taking turns. Your clients can learn other perspectives as to how to solve complex problems that may be useful for them to try in their own lives. You can then discuss not only how your clients solved each exercise, but how they worked together and what they learned from each other as to how they may approach complex problems.
3. For Additional Practice At Home:
Clients may not have access to a computer or internet at home. For that reason, therapists may seek to have their clients use paper and pencil resources to get additional practice outside of therapy hours. You can print out and send your client home with additional cognitive practice using HappyNeuron Pro’s cognitive worksheets. These worksheets can be printed either in color or in black and white ink for your client to take home with them. When they come to see you for their therapy session, you can have your client bring in their worksheet and you can go over it with them to discuss what areas of cognition they may need more practice on.
4. For Bridging:
HappyNeuron Pro makes bridging workbooks that you can use to help connect your client’s cognitive practice to the real world. For example, HappyNeuron Pro designed a grocery shopping workbook which takes the client through the essential skills of planning, budgeting, shopping, and checking out. These worksheets are adaptations from our digital content, which are meant to provide you with functional content that you can use with your clients to help them practice and translate their practiced cognitive skills to the real world. We provide bridging questions to help you discuss with your client how they developed and applied strategies to solve the problems within each worksheet, as well as for you to help your client reflect upon what strategies worked and did not work for them.
5. For An Icebreaker:
Sometimes, participants in a support group or in group therapy need some help getting started. You can print out a specific worksheet that addresses a topic that you would like to have your group members discuss. In the beginning of the group session, you can have your group members perform the exercises and then use the bridging questions to help start a discussion among your participants and yourself. HappyNeuron Pro’s worksheets can help get your client’s mental juices flowing, which can help them participate more in a group and interact with other group members more effectively.