[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] Enjoy at Daycare: Compilation of Games and Recreational Activities (261–270)
Spot the Difference Game
It’s a game where you look at side-by-side illustrations or photos and find the differences.
It helps train concentration to carefully observe the details of the prompt, as well as memory skills to compare and remember the mistakes you found.
It’s best to start with obvious, large differences and gradually move on to more subtle ones.
If you just can’t find a difference, it may help to use hints that indicate which area contains one.
Encourage players to focus and find the differences on their own to help stimulate brain activity.
Balloon Ring Relay
Balloons that move a lot with just a small amount of force can behave unpredictably even when you’re just carrying them sideways.
This game uses that awkwardness in a relay-style challenge where balloons are passed along in order.
Prepare ring-shaped balloons, and give each person a stick made from newspaper or a sponge.
At the starting signal, players use the sticks to pass the balloon to the next person, aiming to get all the balloons to the goal.
You can increase the difficulty—and the excitement once everyone gets used to it—by making the balloon rings smaller and the sticks longer.
Balloon Volleyball × Brain-Training Word-Guessing Quiz
It’s an activity that adds a quiz element to balloon volleyball so you can move your body and brain at the same time.
Attach pieces of paper with letters written on them to the balloons, keep the balloons floating, and observe them to read the letters.
It’s a game that tests various abilities: moving your hands so you don’t let the balloon drop, dynamic visual acuity to read letters stuck on an unstable balloon, and the thinking skills to rearrange the letters you’ve read into a word.
Rather than everyone competing for the right answer individually, it also seems like it would be exciting to have everyone cooperate to complete the word together.
Balloon Baseball Game
It’s a game where you swing a stick vigorously to send a balloon flying as far as possible.
What you aim the balloon at also matters—there are various rule sets, such as aiming for a target or trying to clear obstacles.
It’s a game that can train many parts of the body in the instant of the swing: grip strength on the stick, awareness of transferring power to the balloon, and twisting movements of the body.
To make the balloon fly in the intended direction, it’s important to keep your eyes on it, so it can also help improve concentration.
Fly away, balloon!
This is a game where you throw a beanbag forcefully at balloons placed inside a frame, aiming to knock the balloons out of the frame.
It helps develop both decision-making about where to aim and the throwing power needed to blow the balloons away.
You can adjust the difficulty by varying the distance from the throwing spot to the frame and the size of the balloons, so tailor the rules to the participants.
It would also be exciting to pack the frame with lots of balloons and let everyone enjoy the satisfying feeling of blowing them away all at once.
For those who struggle to knock the balloons out, encourage them to focus on a throwing style that applies power and to be mindful of their body movement.