[For Seniors] Enjoyment at Day Care: A Roundup of Games and Recreational Activities
We’ve put together a collection of games and recreational activities that can be enjoyed at day care.
We introduce plenty of options, including simple games you can play while seated, brain-training games, and activities that help with hand and finger rehabilitation—so please use them as a reference.
Some activities require props, but they’re simple to make using recycled materials or items from 100-yen shops, making them easy for older adults to recreate.
Give them a try with everyone during recreation time or in small breaks.
- [For Seniors] Simple Recreational Activities You Can Enjoy While Seated
- For Seniors: Effective Recreation for Preventing Care Needs—Have Fun While Staying Healthy
- [For Seniors] Simple Tabletop Games: Fun and Engaging Recreational Activities
- [For Seniors] Easy and fun seated activities you can do in your room
- [For Seniors] Today’s Recommended Activity: Fun and Engaging
- [Elderly Day Service] Let’s all have fun! Games and recreational activities
- [For Seniors] Fun! Games and Ideas to Boost Memory
- [For Seniors] Have Fun! A Collection of Group Game Recreation Ideas
- Hand games that liven things up for seniors—also great brain training
- [For Seniors] Easy to try. Fun, crowd-pleasing recreation
- [For Seniors] Fun Small-Group Recreation
- [For Seniors] Recreational Activities Enjoyable in Large Groups
- [For Seniors] Enjoyable Indoor Activities! Recreations and Games That Engage the Mind and Body
[For Seniors] Enjoying Day Care: A Roundup of Games and Recreational Activities (21–30)
Ready, set! Game
Let me introduce a “Ready, go!” game that’s fun for its bluffing and mind games.
In this game, at the cue of “Ready, go!” each player calls out a number and, at the same time, chooses to raise any combination of their hands and feet.
If the number called matches the total number of raised limbs, you win.
In other words, with two players, you’ll be calling numbers from 0 to 8.
Try playing while thinking, “How many will my opponent raise?”—it engages both your brain and body at once.
Also, it’s more challenging, but you can play with three or more players, too.
Shoo Away Game
Let’s play a fun game using balls made from crumpled paper.
It’s called the “Shoo-It-Away Game.” Crumple up sheets of paper or newspaper into balls and place them in a horizontal line in the center of the table.
Before you start, put a strip of tape across the middle of the table to mark the center line.
This tape divides the table into your side and your opponent’s side.
When the game begins, use your hands to push the paper balls into your opponent’s territory on the opposite side.
The rules are simple, but it sounds like it could get exciting.
If you make the paper balls pink, they’ll look like cherry blossoms—perfect for an April game.
It also encourages conversation among participants and can help promote communication among older adults.
[For Seniors] Enjoying Daycare: A Collection of Games and Recreational Activities (31–40)
Korokoro Pon Game
Here’s a tabletop game that uses balls.
Prepare balls of different sizes, such as ping-pong balls or rubber balls about the size of a fist.
An older adult rolls a ball from one end of the table.
On the opposite side of the table from where the older adult is rolling, hang a basket.
The game is to roll the ball and get it into this basket.
It can be played while seated, so it seems suitable for older adults who use wheelchairs as well.
Moments like “It almost went in but didn’t!” are likely to make it exciting for the participants.
Popcorn Game
Even if you know that moving your body is good for your health, you might still feel reluctant to get active.
So here’s a fun popcorn game that lets you exercise your feet while enjoying yourself.
Sit in a chair and place paper plates on both knees.
Fill the plates with lots of crumpled-up paper balls.
Think of the paper plates as frying pans and the crumpled paper as popcorn for the game.
When someone says, “Ready, start!”, flutter your legs and march your feet to shake the paper popcorn out of the plates.
Watching the crumpled paper fall from the plates looks just like popcorn popping in a heated frying pan.
Because it’s an exercise you can do like a game, it seems like older adults can enjoy participating too.
Tossing beanbags toward the swaying basket
Here’s a fun game using beanbags.
You throw beanbags into a hanging basket—much like the ball-toss game often played at school sports days.
Many older adults are familiar with this type of game, so it should be easy to get into.
Like the traditional ball toss, the rules are simple, but this version gets progressively more difficult.
The more beanbags you throw, the more the hanging basket swings, making it harder to land your throws.
You’ll also need to watch the basket and time your throws, so it engages the brain as well.
When the basket fills up with beanbags, older participants are likely to feel a real sense of accomplishment.
Matching game
This is a game where you look at the pictures drawn on the bottoms of arranged paper cups and find and match the ones with the same picture.
By searching for matching pictures, you can train concentration, and by quickly stacking the paper cups, you can also encourage awareness of hand movements.
It’s also important to decide what kind of pictures to draw; for example, limiting them to a spring theme lets players enjoy the game visually as well.
Adding trick elements, such as pictures that look similar but are slightly different, is recommended, as it helps players focus even more on their hands.
Color-Coded Singing Game
It’s a game where everyone claps to the rhythm while singing, with an added element of judging your own color.
Each person wears a band of their assigned color on their wrist.
When your color is called, you keep clapping; when it isn’t, you stop clapping.
You keep singing even if you stop clapping, and when no color is specified, everyone claps—so it really tests each person’s judgment.
Once everyone gets used to the rules, try speeding up the song to make players decide more quickly whether they should keep clapping.