🏅Winner of the 2026 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards Medal🏅

Neurons, Activate! is an activity book and brain discovery program for children aged about 8 to 12 years and younger (any child who is reading to learn). Unlike generic and AI-made activity books, this book has been fully designed and written by a career childhood neuroscientist and clinician based on more than 30 years of experience working with children in schools and clinics and mapping their brain functions. All 50 activities explain which brain systems children are using for each type of physical and mental task, building mind-to-brain self knowledge through direct experience.

By completing the book, children learn not only the science of how brains work but they also complete a personalized brain activity preference profile that reveals their own neural preferences and strengths based on their cumulative ratings about which brain systems were the most/least fun and most/least difficult to activate. This activity book is designed for all children across the entire range of neurodevelopmental variation and uses a wide variety of different kinds of fun and novel cognitive activities to be completed indoors, outdoors, and with friends and family. Each activity is scientifically designed (based on child brain mapping research) to promote developing executive functions, visual-spatial processing, reading and language, learning and memory, fine and gross motor skills, social cognition, quantitative concepts, and sensory-motor integration. 

Neurons, Activate! includes sections for parents, teachers, and therapists to be used as a classroom-ready learning program. It provides detailed interpretation guidelines for adults working with children, making it an exceptional tool for parents, teachers, school psychologists, and occupational therapists alike. Activities can be completed in individual or group settings. 

****NOTE TO READERS AND REVIEWERS FROM THE AUTHOR****: Because this is sold as a pencil-and-paper activity book, the EPUB file available here is in fixed format to preserve the design layout necessary for the intended activities. Readers of this EPUB format will be able to complete many of the included tasks and activities but not all, since some require writing on the page. I'm hoping that EPUB readers can separate this (sometimes annoying) formatting issue from their evaluations of the substance of the book otherwise as a printed hands-on activity book that helps children learn more about the kind of mind they have and about human brain function itself, based on an actual scientific understanding, in contrast with the thousands of currently best-selling AI-made books filled with busywork misleadingly called "neurotraining" and "brain games." Thanks very much for reading and reviewing my activity book for kids!