Recreation Activities for Use in Day Services
This article introduces recreation activities for day service centers.
There are plenty of activities where everyone can get their brains working, team up and compete, and share the thrill and excitement with all participants!
If you’re wondering, “What should we do today?” take a look.
These activities are actually used in care settings, so older adults can enjoy them with peace of mind.
Most of them are simple and require little preparation time.
Have fun and get lively together!
- [For Seniors] Simple Recreational Activities You Can Enjoy While Seated
- [For Seniors] Enjoy safely even during the COVID-19 pandemic: Seated activities
- Games and recreational activities enjoyable in a wheelchair
- [For Seniors] Have Fun! A Collection of Group Game Recreation Ideas
- [For Seniors] Recommended Handmade Activities! Simple Ideas
- Recreation Activities Effective for Long-Term Care Prevention for Seniors
- [For Seniors] Guaranteed to Be a Hit! Popular Day Service Recreational Activities
- [For Seniors] Enjoyment at Day Care: A Roundup of Games and Recreational Activities
- Enjoyable at day care! Tabletop games and recreation
- For Seniors: Effective Recreation for Preventing Care Needs—Have Fun While Staying Healthy
- [Evolving Daycare Services] A summary of engaging recreational initiatives that excite older adults
- [For Seniors] Today’s Recommended Activity: Fun and Engaging
- [For Seniors] Enjoyable Day Service: A Collection of Fun Event Ideas
Recreation activities usable in day services (11–20)
Gesture Game
In the gesture game, everyone sits in a circle and the person in the middle uses gestures while others guess what it is.
The tricky part is that it’s surprisingly hard to get your meaning across.
Still, it’s a fun game where you can laugh together while saying, “I have no idea!” If you’re the one gesturing in the middle, do your best to make sure everyone understands your gestures!
Shooting game with a towel
Aim to surpass the K line! This is a game where you launch a beanbag with a towel and try to get it past the lines drawn on the floor.
You play in pairs, and the trick is to coordinate your timing.
The beanbag can fly all over the place, so please watch out for people around you.
Who knows—your grandpa or grandma might surprise everyone with unexpected strength! Keep launching and see how many lines you can cross!
Whiteboard Game
This whiteboard game is a shiritori where certain words in the middle are predetermined.
It’s exactly like brain training! Isn’t it pretty hard to connect your words to those target words? Even when you come up with words, they don’t always link to the set ones in the middle… which actually makes it possible to keep the game going for a long time.
Shiritori can get a bit boring over time, but making rules like this might be a good idea!
The Rolling Game
In this game, you win by winding a kite string around and around to reel in a car with balloons on it as fast as you can! It feels like it really tests your finesse…
With games like this, even if things go smoothly at first, once you start getting impatient, you tend to mess up, right? It feels like it tests how calm you can stay inside.
If you’re confident with this kind of challenge, why not put your nerves to the test?
ball toss (traditional Japanese beanbag/ball-throwing game)
How about trying a ball-toss game you can play with a box? It’s a game where you keep tossing balls into a box with holes placed on the floor.
Aiming for the holes can be surprisingly tricky.
As more balls line up on top of the box, they can get pushed in or fall off, making it feel like the difficulty level is going up.
Anyone can play, so why not enjoy it while sitting in a chair?
Prefecture Guessing
If you’re not great at sports but confident in your smarts, I recommend this “Guess the Prefecture” game.
It really tests how much you know.
You’ll get a few hints, but if you can figure it out from the first one, people might admire you as someone who really knows Japan well! Some of the hints are pretty tough, but even if you dislike physical activities and recreational games, this might be the one you can enjoy!
Recreation Activities for Use in Day Services (21–30)
Spot the differences
Spot-the-difference is a game where you compare two similar pictures and look for small differences.
The key point here is that the illustrations are autumn-themed, so while sharpening your focus to identify the differences, you can also soak in the seasonal atmosphere.
The pictures feature various autumnal elements, but they aren’t necessarily the differences, so don’t be misled—compare the entire images carefully.
It’s said there are various techniques, such as comparing block by block or taking a soft-focus look at the whole, so try tackling it in your own way.
