What’s Missing?

You may remember the “What’s Missing?” from your childhood. Like many of our other Building Brains games, it doesn’t require any complicated materials. Simply gather items from around your house, let your child examine them, and then hide one and have your child guess which one is hidden. What’s Missing helps children build working memory, language skills, and ability to think flexibly. The full set of instructions for What’s Missing can be found here.

Back in June, we did a livesteam on Facebook, where we played What’s Missing with the audience. If your child would like to play along, you can find the video on our Building Brains Together YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/llObUyCEvA0 .

Building Brains Together works to increase executive functions in children through play. Executive functions are critical for long term psychological and social development. Measures of executive functions in early childhood predict outcomes in health, wealth, and criminality nearly thirty years into the future. Additionally, executive functions skills are proven to be more important for academic success than IQ or entry-level math or reading abilities.

If you are interested in the rest of our brain building preschool games, you can visit our resources page and download all of the games for free.