[For Seniors] Brain Training Recommended for Dementia Prevention
In this article, we introduce brain-training activities that can help prevent dementia in older adults.
As we age, memory is something everyone worries about.
For those concerned, we recommend simple, easy-to-do brain training designed for seniors.
Doing brain training activates the brain and can contribute to overall mental and physical well-being.
There are quiz formats, riddles, four-character idioms, and even brain-training activities you can do while moving your body.
Find the brain training that suits you, and enjoy doing it.
If you’re a caregiving professional looking for brain-training ideas, be sure to check these out.
- [For Seniors] Brain Training! Recall Quiz Collection!
- [For Seniors] Challenging but Exciting! Kanji Quiz
- [For Seniors] Find daily brain training. Today’s recommended brain workout.
- [For Seniors] Lively Wordplay Game: Fun Recreation for Elderly Care
- [For Seniors] Fun Brain Training! Prefecture Quiz
- Recommended for seniors. Brain training with an odd-one-out quiz.
- [For Seniors] Popular Brain Training and Recreational Quizzes
- [For Seniors] Fun and Lively! Recommended Quiz Questions
- [For Seniors] Fun Riddles That Stimulate the Brain
- [For Seniors] Enjoyable Brain Training! Finger Exercises That Help Prevent Dementia
- [For Seniors] A Brain-Training, Crowd-Pleasing Word Search Game
- [Brain Training] Lively Word Quiz for Seniors
- [For Seniors] Recreational activities and games that let you have fun while strengthening your legs
[For Seniors] Prevent Dementia! Recommended Brain Training (111–120)
Beanbag Bingo
This is a game where players alternately place beanbags on a grid, and the first to make a line of four wins.
It’s important to aim to complete a line with your own color, but you should also be mindful of blocking your opponent’s line.
Using beanbags is another key feature—the action of carrying and placing them on the grid helps develop grip strength and provides arm exercise.
The game strongly emphasizes strategic thinking, as play style varies by player, so you’ll need to adapt your strategy depending on your opponent.
By playing repeatedly, you may even discover your own surefire winning methods.
[For Seniors] Brain Training That Helps Prevent Dementia! Recommended Exercises (121–130)
Recipe card
This is a card game where you pick two words from the lined-up cards and combine them to complete the name of a dish.
The key is how many dish names you can recall from memory based on the letters in front of you.
It’s also recommended to shuffle in a dummy card that forms a complete dish name on its own—it can mislead players, spark ideas, or serve as a hint for a similar dish.
It should be fun not only to come up with correct dish names, but also to invent plausible-sounding ones that don’t actually exist.
karuta (traditional Japanese playing cards)
Karuta is a game where you listen to the reading cards and compete to grab the picture cards.
It’s recommended for people with dementia because it stimulates hearing and sight.
When playing with a large group, commercially available karuta sets may be a bit small, so it could be fun to make your own sets together, such as a “Popular Songs Karuta” or a “National Travel Karuta.” Karuta used to be a classic New Year’s pastime, and many older adults likely have one or two memories connected to it.
It would be wonderful to enjoy karuta along with those memories and the conversations they bring.
Shiritori
Shiritori, a word game many of us have played since childhood, is also a recommended recreation for people with dementia.
One of its strengths is how easy it is—no materials or preparation required.
It’s handy for filling small pockets of time, like on the bus when going out to the suburbs.
Another plus is that you can adjust the difficulty to match the person’s cognitive level.
You can customize freely with rules like “three-letter words only” or “food items only.” You could also set a goal, such as “finish after connecting 50 words.”
Hinamatsuri Spot-the-Difference Quiz
How about a spot-the-difference game that’s effective as brain training for seniors? Here’s a “Hinamatsuri (Girls’ Day) Spot-the-Difference” activity we recommend for March.
In spot-the-difference, you temporarily memorize the correct picture, right? By using that correct picture as a reference to find the differences, it’s said to be effective for training memory, observation, and concentration.
You can find spot-the-difference pictures online or prepare printed images—one of the nice things about this quiz is that it doesn’t require much effort.
Of course, you can also create a large spot-the-difference illustration in advance and put it up on a whiteboard or similar surface for everyone to enjoy.
Hiragana cards
This is a game where you use a set of kana cards laid out in the playing area to make as many words as possible within a time limit.
You can play with various patterns, such as specifying the number of characters—like “two-character words”—or setting themes, such as “names of vegetables.” If someone gets stuck playing alone because they can’t think of words, it’s recommended to play in teams and cooperate.
You can make it challenging by limiting the available characters, or ramp up the excitement by adding more full sets of the 50-sound kana to broaden the range of words.
Card flip
This is a simple card game where each card has a different color on the front and back, and players keep flipping them to a designated color.
It’s basically a competitive format: both players flip cards to their own color and compete to see which color is more prevalent when time runs out.
Consider rules like allowing flips with only one hand to help balance participants’ abilities as much as possible.
A 2-on-2 team match is also recommended, as it gets heated by emphasizing not just speed but strategy as well.