[For Seniors] Handmade Game Ideas You Can Enjoy
Games and recreational activities are essential in senior facilities like day-care centers.
In this article, we introduce handmade games you can enjoy.
Some are made using recycled materials like milk cartons and newspapers, while others use items you can get at 100-yen shops, such as paper cups and disposable chopsticks.
All of them involve thinking, competing, and playing, so they serve as brain training—and best of all, they foster communication.
In team competitions, everyone might get fired up, focus on the game, and end up in a frenzy!
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[For Seniors] DIY Game Ideas You Can Enjoy (111–120)
Just paper and pen! Number Bingo
It’s a simple game where you use a pencil to draw a grid and numbers on paper, then aim for bingo.
The grid is 3 squares by 3 squares, for a total of 9, and you freely choose numbers from 1 to 15 to fill them in at random.
Once everyone has finished writing their numbers, you’re ready to play: read out the numbers on the cards in order, and each player aims for bingo.
You can enjoy seeing whether a line on your own card completes, or you can turn it into a competitive game where you try to complete more lines than your opponent—either way, it’s sure to be exciting.
Paper Cup Bingo
It’s a game where players take turns placing three sizes of paper cups—large, medium, and small—on a grid, aiming to line up three cups of their color.
The grid is a 3×3 board with nine squares, and you try to complete your own line while preventing your opponent from completing theirs.
Because the rules allow you to stack your cup on top of your opponent’s cup, choosing which size to play becomes a key strategic point.
This stacking element broadens the range of tactics and makes for more advanced mind games.
Think through your opponent’s moves as well as your own approach to keep your brain fully engaged.
Picture-matching box
It’s a box you can manipulate to enjoy how the images on each face change.
First, use thick paper to make four cubes, line them up, and tape them together, adding a mechanism that lets the faces flip inside out.
If you attach photos or drawings divided into four parts onto each face, the box is complete.
Since the range of motion is limited, you don’t have to think too hard about how to move it—you can simply enjoy the straightforward transformation of the images.
By giving the artwork a theme, such as seasonal changes, you can also enjoy a sense of unity in the piece.
Thinking about colors and shapes: Arrow Puzzle
This is a puzzle game where you try to restore the pieces to the original 3×3 grid by matching the colors and directions of the arrows drawn on them.
Draw arrows that extend across adjacent squares, and color the arrows so that each square contains all four colors.
After that, cut out each square to complete the puzzle; it’s a good idea to write numbers on the back so you can tell the correct arrangement.
If restoring the exact original form is difficult, you might start by focusing only on connecting the arrows and arranging as much as you can from there.
PET-bottle bingo for dementia rehabilitation
This is a game where you insert plastic bottle caps into a dedicated stand, aiming to create a row of caps of the same color.
The stand consists of a board with rods attached, and the caps are pre-punched with holes so they can be slid onto the rods.
Players take turns inserting caps of two colors, alternating by color.
While focusing on building your own row and preventing your opponent from completing theirs, the game feels like a three-dimensional version of Five in a Row.
Although it develops thinking and decision-making skills through strategy against your opponent, you can also strengthen finger dexterity by designing the cap holes and practicing sliding the caps onto the rods.
Okiagari Koboishi Race
Let’s poke the head of the okiagari-koboshi and aim for the goal! To make a handcrafted okiagari-koboshi, use a paper cup, half of a capsule from a capsule toy, modeling clay, and a marble.
Line the inside of the capsule with the marble and modeling clay, then cover it with the paper cup.
Have everyone draw faces and patterns on the cup.
After that, poke the head with a stick to keep it righting itself as you move it forward.
Combining the traditional okiagari-koboshi from the Aizu region of Fukushima with a race is such a fresh and original idea, isn’t it?
Recommended for recreation! Tong catch
It’s a game where you skillfully use tongs to move ping-pong balls from a box in front of you to a basket at hand.
If you play it as a head-to-head match facing your opponent, it encourages not only precise tong control but also speed.
It might also be good to vary the shape and size of the tongs, creating a pattern where players think about how much force to apply as they move.
Because the task of moving the balls is so simple, it’s easy to tweak the tools you use.
Try coming up with variations that focus on the body parts you want to train and the way you apply force.