[For Seniors] Fun and Engaging Brain-Training Recreation
We’ve put together a collection of brain-training puzzles and simple exercises that you’ll want to actively incorporate into recreational activities.
It’s easy to get bored with the same types of puzzles and games, right?
Let’s liven up your recreation time with puzzles you haven’t tried before, or some quirky and fun challenges and exercises!
If it’s difficult, try allowing more time to think or offering hints so everyone can enjoy it as they go.
We’re also introducing plenty of activities that can make people laugh and lighten the mood, even if they don’t know the answer.
Feel free to use these as a reference and put them to good use!
- [For Seniors] Fun Brain Training! Lively Mind Exercises
- [For Seniors] Fun and Lively! Recommended Quiz Questions
- [For Seniors] Hand and finger play roundup: Finger exercises that lead to brain training
- [For Seniors] Easy and fun seated activities you can do in your room
- [For Seniors] Fun Brain Training! A Collection of Tricky Quizzes You’ll Definitely Get Stumped By
- Hand games that liven things up for seniors—also great brain training
- [For Seniors] Fun Recreational Activities Without Equipment
- [For Seniors] Find daily brain training. Today’s recommended brain workout.
- [For Seniors] A Brain-Training, Crowd-Pleasing Word Search Game
- Fun Brain Training! Memory Games for Seniors
- [For Seniors] Lively Wordplay Game: Fun Recreation for Elderly Care
- [For Seniors] Today’s Recommended Activity: Fun and Engaging
- [Brain Training for Seniors] Recommended Hand-Play Recreation for Dementia Prevention
[For Seniors] Fun and Exciting Brain-Training Recreations (181–190)
Great for recreation too! Train your core and fingertips with a newspaper tower
This is a newspaper-tube tower that lets you train your core while playing! The rules are super simple: just stack triangular tubes made by folding newspaper.
Starting by placing them on the floor while seated helps strengthen your core muscles, and straightening your back to stack them higher helps build your back muscles and improve posture.
Set the goal according to your condition—for example, up to where your hands can reach, or, if you can stand, up to the height you can stack while standing.
It’s also fun to time yourselves and race with everyone!
Which number is the most ___?
Are you familiar with working memory? Working memory is the ability to temporarily store and process information needed for tasks and actions.
It’s said to be involved in judgments and behaviors in all aspects of daily life.
Let’s train our working memory by searching, among many numbers, for either the larger numbers or the smaller numbers.
While thinking about whether a number is large or small, focus on finding the numbers.
Some older adults may feel, “I can’t find any at all.” But there’s no need to worry.
The goal isn’t necessarily to find them; simply looking for large or small numbers itself serves as brain training.
A quiz to find the odd-one-out kanji
It’s a game where you look for the odd-one-out kanji whose shape is slightly different from the others that look the same on the board.
Tracing the lined-up characters with your eyes and spotting what feels off helps stimulate the brain.
The more characters there are, the longer it takes to find the odd one out, so it’s recommended to gradually increase the number to really get your brain working.
It could also be fun to aim for missed odd ones by using patterns like kanji with many strokes or subtle differences that are easy to overlook.
Disposable Chopstick Picking Game
It’s a game where you twist a bundle of disposable chopsticks into a standing tower and then pull out one chopstick at a time; whoever topples the tower loses.
You’re tested on fine motor skills, like judging which chopsticks affect the balance and how to pull them out so the force doesn’t transfer through the structure.
The careful yet quick pulling motion is also crucial for maintaining balance, so keep your focus and sense of speed sharp.
It’s also interesting that as the number of remaining sticks decreases, the ability to judge the overall balance becomes even more important.
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.
Word Bingo!
Let’s enjoy a wordplay-based bingo game called Word Bingo! The bingo card has 9 squares, and you fill them with words that match a given theme.
For example, if the theme is “words that start with ‘ka,’” you fill the squares with words that begin with ‘ka’ that you can think of.
When the representative announces their nine ‘ka’ words, check whether any of them match the words on your card; if they do, mark them.
You win when you complete a line vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.
A great thing about this bingo is that it’s fun for large groups.
Let’s find words within a word.
I’d like to introduce a game where everyone can play at the same time and get excited: a “find words inside a word” game.
In this game, you rearrange or extract letters from a given target word and see how many other words you can make.
For example, if the target is “とうもろこし” (corn), you can make words like “うし” (cow) or “しも” (frost).
Decide on a target word and a time limit, and you can compete to see who can find the most words.
You can also share with each other, saying, “Here are the words I found.”
