Activities to improve cognitive skills in delayed kids

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Does anyone have any ideas on how we can improve the cognitive skills of kids with severe developmental delays ? I am looking for ideas on fun, simple activities that can be done around the home to help them develop cognitive awareness of the world around them, how things work, etc.

Thanks !

I think with any kid, particularly kids that have autism, you need to start where they are. What are your child's interests? I'm no doctor, but I'd start a program revolving around those interests and drawing them slowly out into something else...for instance, lining things up, colors, math, etc. Dinosaurs = geology, trains = mechanics. Find ways to connect what they do love to other things.

Get the book The Child With Special Needs: Encouraging Intellectual and Emotional Growth by Stanley Greenspan. It is a gold mine of ideas and a whole methodology (which he calls Floor Time) which I found very helpful.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/child-w ... 0201407266

People who find ABA too rote will be especially pleased with his approach. He teaches the parent how to lead the kid (with cognitive delays) into discovering things rather than merely memorizing them as in ABA.

I'm not listing the things he advises because- well- it takes a whole book to describe it. But in general it revolves around nudging the child towards using particular parts of their brain that they might not intuitively use because of the cognitive delay. There is much parental involvement. He calls his approach Floor Time because it involves the parent getting down on the floor with the kid but what he advises is not intuitive. I would not have guessed it on my own. It is far more involved than "play with your kid". But it isn't ABA rote either.