[For Seniors] Finger Rehabilitation Tools: Easy DIY Ideas
Illnesses or disabilities can make it difficult to move the fingers or can cause unintended movements.
When these symptoms affect the fingers, they can lead to various difficulties in daily life, such as being unable to use chopsticks or a pen properly, struggling to get dressed, or lacking strength and falling.
In this article, we introduce DIY rehabilitation tools to help improve finger mobility.
All of them are easy to make, so consider creating them in senior care facilities to support rehabilitation for older adults!
- [For Seniors] DIY Hand Rehabilitation Tools to Strengthen Fingertips: A Collection of Handmade Ideas
- [For Seniors] DIY Rehabilitation Aids: A Collection of Easy-to-Make Ideas
- [For Seniors] Simple Handicrafts Recommended for Finger Exercise
- [For Seniors] Ideal for Finger Rehabilitation: A Collection of Simple Ideas Made with Yarn
- [For Seniors] Recommended Handmade Activities! Simple Ideas
- [For Seniors] A roundup of games using disposable chopsticks: Chopstick activities that also support rehabilitation
- [For Seniors] Easy Craft Activity Using Straws
- [For Seniors] Recommended Muscle Training Gear. Simple and Easy
- [For Seniors] Get Started Easily: Simple Handicraft Kit Ideas
- [For Seniors] Hand and finger play roundup: Finger exercises that lead to brain training
- [For Seniors] For Men! Easy Craft Kit
- [Handmade Assistive Devices] DIY assistive tools made from 100-yen shop materials. Packed with simple ideas.
- [For Seniors] Easy and Fun! Tsumami Zaiku Craft Ideas
[For Seniors] Finger Rehabilitation Goods: Easy Handmade Ideas (21–30)
Concentration using your fingertips
This is a handmade concentration (matching) game that also helps with finger dexterity and brain training.
You can make it using sponge blocks and popsicle sticks sold at 100-yen shops.
The basic idea is to pull out popsicle sticks stuck into a sponge block, but let’s add a twist.
By putting colored stickers on the popsicle sticks, it becomes a brain-training matching game.
Of course, you can also use stickers with animals or fruits instead of colors.
Choose two sticks from the sponge block; if both sticks have the same sticker, remove them.
If they’re different, put the sticks back in the same spots.
It’s a game that’s exciting for both individuals and groups, letting you enjoy finger exercises and brain training at the same time.
It’s also great for recreational activities.
Training aids for fingers and wrists made with pipe cleaners
This is a training tool for fingers and wrists using chenille stems (pipe cleaners).
Prepare a pegboard with many small round holes—often used for hanging hooks—and some pipe cleaners.
If you don’t have a pegboard, you can use a thin wooden board with holes large enough for the pipe cleaners to pass through.
Insert one pipe cleaner into each hole, and you’re ready to go.
The person training will twist neighboring pipe cleaners together and then untwist them to separate.
You can do this with both hands or just one.
The more repetitions you do, the more you’ll feel the load, making it a great exercise for the fingers and wrists!
Bottle opening and closing training tool
There are times when you can’t get a good grip and it’s hard to open a plastic bottle cap, right? Let’s train with this tool so you can open caps on your own! Prepare several plastic bottles by cutting off the bottom two-thirds and leaving only the area near the mouth.
Firmly attach these to a single sheet of drawing paper or thick cardstock to fix them in place, and you’re done! The person training should practice twisting with the whole hand to open and close the caps, and then increase the difficulty by opening and closing the caps using just the fingertips.
This tool lets you move the hands, fingers, and wrists thoroughly, so definitely give it a try!
Finger exercises with plastic bottle caps
Here’s a recreational activity you can make using the many plastic bottle caps that tend to pile up.
Place the caps on a base sheet, matching each cap with the same kanji written on the sheet, making sure not to make mistakes.
Kanji sets that are hard to distinguish—like the fish or tree radicals series—are recommended.
Because players identify the characters while pinching the caps with their fingers, it trains both the brain and fine motor skills.
Give it a try—make it and play with it! You could also turn it into a game by pairing addition problems with their answers.
beanbags
By feeling the texture of the beans inside with your fingers and performing actions like gripping, throwing, and grasping, beanbags can be used for hand and finger rehabilitation.
First, make a small pouch with fabric you like, then fill it with adzuki beans or similar.
Besides adzuki beans, we recommend using prayer beads, dried corn kernels, or seashells.
Close it up, and you’re done! You can also use it to play with your grandchildren, making hand and finger rehab fun.
Try games like stacking the beanbags or tossing them into a basket.
Finger and brain training goods
Here is a rehab tool that trains both hand and finger movements and also works as brain training.
First, prepare a sheet of paper with numbers written inside circles placed at random, and plastic bottle caps labeled with the same numbers.
It’s recommended to make the circles about the same size as the bottle caps.
The trainee will pick up a bottle cap with a number on it and place it on the spot with the matching number on the paper.
You can arrange the numbers neatly on the paper, or increase the difficulty by scattering them randomly.
Use this to practice grasping objects with the fingers and to exercise the brain by finding matching numbers!
A device for training fingers by inserting rods
This item can be used to train grasping with the fingertips.
Prepare materials like finely cut pieces of drinking straws or thin, rolled sticks made from origami paper.
Also prepare a container, and make holes in it that are just large enough for the sticks to pass through.
The person training should insert the sticks only through these holes.
It may look simple, but aiming for small holes and inserting the sticks can be quite challenging.
Let’s practice the actions of pinching and releasing with the fingertips until they can be done reliably!