Building Brains Community Action
Building Brains Community Action – Lethbridge Housing Authority
By Makena Wood, B.Sc. Neuroscience student and BBT volunteer
For the past 7 years, Building Brains Together (BBT) has partnered with Lethbridge Housing Authority (LHA) to offer an outdoor play program to families in their communities. BBT’s mission remains to build adult capabilities to support brain development and executive functions across the lifespan supported by research and education. As this blog will highlight, we return to LHA every week (in rain or shine, snow or wind) with a team of dedicated volunteers to bring our mission and opportunities to play outdoors to LHA families.
Who is Lethbridge Housing Authority?
From LHA’s website: “The Lethbridge Housing Authority currently serves over 2,500 Albertans by providing affordable housing and a Rent Supplement Program to the community including seniors, individuals, and families.” Through their website, LHA also connects families to community programs that can benefit them. Under the ‘Tenants’ tab on their website, information can be found about BBT’s partnership with LHA, as well as LHA’s partnership with Family Centre in Lethbridge (also involved in Lethbridge’s Play Charter and an advocate for play in the community).
LHA is also involved in administering Lethbridge’s Coordinated Access Round Table (or CART) to combat homelessness and provide recovery-focused solutions to the community by partnering with various community and funded agency partners.
For more information about LHA or CART, visit LHA’s website: lethbridgehousing.ca
How is BBT involved?
Our weekly play program:
Every week, a team of BBT volunteers visits 3 LHA communities for an hour to provide healthy snacks, an independent free-play activity or craft, structured games, and a listening ear. Children choose which aspects of our visit they’d like to engage in each week. Some consistently prefer to engage in the independent activity, while others can hardly finish their snack before they’re ready to start the group games we’ve planned for the week. Still, some others prefer just to chat and have someone to talk to for the hour that we visit.
· Here's how a typical LHA visit looks:
At the start of the hour, volunteers arrive and set up tables, snacks, and BBT’s sign, and organize materials for the activities. Children begin to arrive home from school, and once they’ve returned their school belongings home, they can rejoin us out at the tables. We start by offering the snacks we’ve brought for the week, and many children enjoy eating their snacks while completing the independent activity or craft for the week. After enough time to finish eating, we start our games for the week. In the warmer weeks, when the
program is more popular, we often begin with a larger group game (for example, red light green light, or a tag game) for all ages and then split into smaller groups to play games more suited to younger and older ages separately. In colder weeks, we usually stick to group games involving lots of movement to stay warm (“Skittles” in bright winter clothing is always a great option, but any other tag games also work well too). Near 5-10 minutes left in the program, we encourage the children to help us clean up our materials and their space, and incentivize them to pick up any litter lying around with a sticker of their choice.
· LHA field trips:
More recently, BBT has been able to connect LHA families to other community resources and activities with “field trips”. Last summer, families participated in a cooking class at the Interfaith Chinook Country Kitchen to make homemade pizzas and Dole Whip, as well as a Clay Hand Building class at CASA. A special thank you is needed for Jamie with Lethbridge Transit who helped us with transportation between LHA locations and our field trip activities.
In the spring of this year, when organizing transit was more challenging, we decided to try out “walking field trips”. These field trips allowed us to add some excitement to our LHA routines and give kids the opportunity to explore a more open green space and play at their local playgrounds (while also mixing in some BBT curriculum games, of course!).
· Education:
Lastly, to tie in the “building adult capabilities” aspect of our mission statement, BBT volunteers check in with parents as frequently as they can and provide educational resources and incentives to learn about brain development. Here is an example of a flyer parents may receive:
After engaging with brain-related educational content, they can email a response and feedback about the content to our coordinator to receive a grocery gift card.
What are the benefits of play for LHA?
Through research, we know that play is an essential tool for developing executive function in children. Executive function refers to skills like working memory, cognitive flexibility, and behavioural inhibition, which are all critical skills for academic success and contribute to later life success and health. Improved self-control skills for a child translates to better health and wealth, and reduced involvement in crime in their adulthood (Moffit et al., 2011). Additionally, research shows that children from lower socioeconomic status are at higher risk for experiencing difficulties with their executive function while the factors contributing to their disadvantage remain outside of their control (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2011). Thus, our outdoor play program at LHA has the ability to promote the following, through play, for children and families involved:
1) Improved executive function skills through play
2) Improved academic performance mediated by strengthened executive function
3) Better later life outcomes related to improved self-control in childhood
4) Generational executive function skills*
*By this, 2 things are meant:
a) While children improve their executive function (EF) through playing weekly games with us, parents learn about brain development and the importance of play which will hopefully encourage them to apply these practices to their own benefit as well. Small improvements in parent executive function, through small changes in behaviour, can also be powerful for their children’s EF.
b) When the improvements made for current LHA children contribute to better health and life outcomes, and they understand the importance of play, they are better equipped to support EF in their future communities as well as in their children if they choose to be parents.
Favourite games at LHA:
To round off this blog highlighting the time we spend with LHA weekly, I wanted to include some of their favourite games that you can also try at home to build your brain! We play a mix of games at LHA; some familiar BBT games, some other games, and some games that the kids teach us.
Here are a few of the best alongside the skills that are strengthened while playing:
1) Red Light Green Light and Sneaky Statues
- The basic rules of both games are similar, but Sneaky Statues is typically preferred by the older children in the group. In Red Light Green Light, children start at one end of an open space with the goal of making it to the other side where the game leader is. The game leader will hold up a “green light” where children can run towards them, or a “red light” where children must freeze. If children move during the red light, they must return to the beginning. In Sneaky Statues, the goal is the same as Red Light Green Light, but instead of lights, the game leader (the “museum security guard”) will alternate between facing the runners and being turned away. When the security guard is turned away, children can run towards the other side; but, once they turn around, the children must freeze (like statues). If the statues are caught moving by the security guard, they must return to the start.
- Both games involve alternating between moving and “freezing”; games such as these engage cognitive flexibility when switching between actions and freezing, as well as behavioural inhibition to remain frozen despite wanting to continue playing.
2) Apple Orange Banana
- In this game, children are lined up in a single file line and all face the same direction. The person leading the game will say one of three commands at a time; “Apple” means take a step forward, “Banana” means take a step back, and “Orange” means turn 180 degrees to face the other direction. If anyone in line makes a mistake, they must step out of the game.
- Apple Orange Banana involves working memory because you must remember what each of the commands mean and manipulate this information to perform the action and respond to the commands in any order they might be presented. Behavioural inhibition is also exercised because you must stop yourself from performing an incorrect action and wait for the next action to be called.
3) Slippery Snake
- This game is not a formal BBT curriculum game, but it is an LHA favourite. Slippery Snake is easy to set up; you need small pylons set out in a “snake-like” pattern in an open space and two equal teams lined up on either end of the snake. The game begins by one member from each team hopping with two feet on either side of each pylon until they meet somewhere in the middle of the snake. Once they meet, they play rock paper scissors. The winner gets to continue hopping along the snake to the other team’s side, and the loser has to return to their own side while their team sends another player to meet the opponent continuing towards them. The rock paper scissors face offs continue until one team has successfully had a player make it all the way to the other side.
- Slippery Snake challenges children’s behavioural inhibition while they wait for their turn to begin hopping towards their rock paper scissors face off. Of course, they also need working memory to remember and manipulate the rules of the game, as well as cognitive flexibility to switch between the roles of playing and waiting. Children must also practice paying close attention to what is happening during the game because their turn to go often comes up faster than they realize.
4) What’s Missing?
- This is an excellent game for children under 10. In What’s Missing? children become “detectives”. The game leader has a handful of different objects laid out in front of them (for example, a spoon, a crayon, a lego brick, a toy animal, and a shoelace) while the children sit facing the leader and the objects. The leader will ask the children to close their eyes and use a book or a folder to cover up the objects while they take an object away. The children will then be asked to reopen their eyes and figure out which object has been taken away. Children are encouraged not to shout the answer out if they know it but instead raise their hand quietly to answer.
- What’s Missing? challenges behavioural inhibition because children must keep their eyes closed when they are asked to and avoid shouting their answers during the game. Working memory and cognitive flexibility are also challenged while they try to figure out which object is missing; this is done by remembering an image or list of objects that had been there, manipulating this information to determine which one is missing, and switching mind sets between rounds to avoid confusing which object is missing in the current round.
5) Blind Fold Lego or Right is Right
- Generally, Blind Fold Lego is best for older kids (10+) and Right is Right is best for younger kids (under 10). However, some kids are able to challenge themselves to Blind Fold Lego, so we always like to give them the opportunity to try if they are interested. Both games involve copying a model structure built out of Lego exactly in shape and colour. In Right is Right, children try to copy the structure set out by an adult or a friend as quickly and accurately as they can. In Blind Fold Lego, the child recreating the model structure is wearing a blind fold and is directed by the builder of the model on how to move their hands and put pieces together to recreate the model while blindfolded.
- Both versions of the game involve cognitive flexibility in creating structures out of Lego by needing to switch between using motor skills and using spatial information to put the blocks together. Behavioural inhibition is also exercised because it can be frustrating when pieces aren’t fitting together right or when mistakes are made; the child must resist the urge to simply give up on the game.
**More detailed descriptions of these curriculum games can be found under the ‘Resources’ tab on our website!
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog about our partnership with Lethbridge Housing Authority. We are always grateful for the opportunities we have to connect with the community and provide others with the resources they need to be empowered to play and support brain development.
References
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2011). Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Aontrol” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function. Working Paper No. 11. Available at: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/working-paper/building-the-brains-air-traffic-control-system-how-early-experiences-shape-the-development-of-executive-function/ (Accessed May, 2025).
Moffit, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Poulton, R., Roberts, B. W., Ross, S., Sears, M. R., Thomson, W. M., & Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. PNAS, 108, 2693-2698. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1010076108