[For Seniors] Recommended Even for People with Dementia! Simple Recreational Activities
Recreation activities conducted at nursing and care facilities aim to improve brain and physical functions.
They are said to help activate the brain and can be expected to prevent dementia or slow its progression.
However, it is also important to maintain emotional well-being through feelings like “this is fun, I feel happy” and communication with others.
If people push themselves too hard for functional improvement and the things they “can’t do” become a source of stress, they won’t be able to enjoy the activities.
So this time, we’re introducing “simple recreation” ideas!
These are easy, accessible activities designed for older adults to enjoy.
Please feel free to make use of them.
- [For Seniors] Easy and fun seated activities you can do in your room
- Simple games for preventing and improving dementia
- [For Seniors] Fun Recreational Activities Without Equipment
- Recommended recreational activities for older adults with dementia
- [Brain Training for Seniors] Recommended Hand-Play Recreation for Dementia Prevention
- [For Seniors] Fun and Engaging Brain-Training Recreation
- [Elderly Day Service] Let’s all have fun! Games and recreational activities
- [For Seniors] A Collection of Fun Classic Caregiving Activities
- [For Seniors] Today’s Recommended Activity: Fun and Engaging
- Hand games that liven things up for seniors—also great brain training
- [For Seniors] Easy to try. Fun, crowd-pleasing recreation
- [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] Recommended for People with Dementia! Simple Recreational Activities (21–30)
Animal Memory Rec
People aged 75 and over are now required to take a Cognitive Function Test to renew their driver’s license.
Even those who don’t have much trouble remembering things can feel a bit nervous when they know they’re going to be tested.
How about livening things up with a memory-training game similar to that test? Here’s a simple way to run it: first, show 8–10 animal illustrations—or just the words if you don’t have pictures—have the participant memorize them, then ask them to write them on a whiteboard.
Adjust the difficulty by changing the number of animals or the memorization time.
If you have a whiteboard, it should be fun even outdoors.
Whac-A-Mole
Here’s a fun and brain-training activity using paper cups: Whack-a-mole! Prepare about 10 to 20 paper cups and draw moles on them to make your moles.
Attach a pair of chopsticks to a paper cup to create a hammer for whacking the moles.
By involving older adults from the making stage, it also becomes a craft activity.
Whether as a craft or as a whack-a-mole game, it uses the hands.
Dexterous finger movements help stimulate the brain.
The whacking motion can help improve joint movement and is expected to boost concentration as well.
It would be exciting to turn it into a team competition for a recreation session.
Hometown: A song-and-exercise routine that livens things up with three movements
Move your hands to the melody of the children’s song “Furusato,” and stimulate your brain not only through the hand movements but also by visualizing your hometown.
The flow is two claps followed by forming a number with your hands, thinking ahead to the next number while keeping the rhythm of the song in mind.
After making a 5 with both hands, the count returns to 1, so this is where you should focus carefully and aim for smoother movements.
Once you get used to it, we also recommend increasing the speed to further improve concentration.
Improve cold sensitivity! Exercises to make your fingers easier to move
Finger movements are essential for smooth daily living and also contribute to safety when holding objects.
This exercise focuses on consciously engaging finger movements to promote circulation and activate the brain.
The routine isn’t complicated: while paying close attention to which part of the hand you’re touching, rub one hand with the other.
By alternating which hand you touch, you can carefully check the sensations in both hands and connect that awareness to smoother, more coordinated movement.
Color Game
How about a color game as a whiteboard activity? For this game, prepare papers with color words written on them.
The key is to make the kanji different from the actual color of the text.
Instead of reading the words on the papers attached to the whiteboard, ask the participating seniors to say the color of the letters.
It may seem easy, but it actually trips people up and often leads to lots of laughs.
Because you see with your eyes and think with your head, it’s effective for reflexes and brain training.
Start by letting them answer slowly and thoughtfully, then gradually pick up the pace.
Milk Carton Edition! Word-Finding Brain Training Game
This is a game where players make words that fit a theme using hiragana cards laid out on the table.
Preparation is simple—just cut up milk cartons and stick the 50-sound syllabary onto them—so people can easily join from the setup stage.
As you add more sets of the 50 sounds, the range of words you can create expands, and the process of looking for letters takes more effort, which enhances the brain-training effect.
It could also be exciting to proceed with a cooperative pattern where players create multiple words together, leading naturally to communication.
Finger rotation exercise
Let me introduce a finger-rotation exercise where you touch the same fingers of both hands together and rotate them.
This exercise was devised by an internist, and it’s said to help improve cognitive function, speed-reading ability, and calculation skills.
Amazingly, more than a third of the cerebrum is devoted to moving and controlling the hands and fingers.
So simply moving your fingers stimulates and activates the brain.
Since you’ll be moving your fingers, it might help to gently massage the bases of your fingers before you start.
The motion is simple—just twirling your fingers—so it seems easy to fit into small pockets of time.