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[For Seniors] Enjoy Your Alone Time: Perfect Ideas for Passing the Time
Among elderly people, there are likely some who have more alone time than they know what to do with.
Some live by themselves, and others spend much of the day alone because their family members are at work.
There may also be those who are thinking about how to spend their alone time while they’re in the hospital.
In this article, we introduce recreational activities that are perfect for passing the time and enjoying solo moments.
We’ve gathered easy options that you can start as hobbies without much effort.
If you find something here that seems suitable for an older adult you know, please share it with them.
[For Seniors] Enjoy Your Me-Time: Perfect Pastime Ideas (1–10)
Matchstick Puzzle
This is a puzzle where you take an incorrect equation made with matchsticks and rearrange a specified number of sticks to turn it into a correct equation.
Think carefully about how the current equation is wrong and exactly what needs to be changed.
When moving just one stick, it doesn’t necessarily stay within the same digit, so be aware that two digits might change at the same time.
It’s also important to judge which digits to keep.
In the end, there’s more to think about than you might expect with this puzzle.
Spot the differences
Spot-the-difference is a classic game that many people have tried in various situations.
Lately, the spot-the-difference puzzles on Saizeriya’s kids’ menu are famously challenging—not only for children but enjoyable for adults as well.
Because they’re fun and also work as brain training, spot-the-difference puzzles are perfect for seniors to pass the time.
There are many books supervised by specialists, specifically designed for seniors’ cognitive training, available at bookstores, and it’s also a good idea to print out free spot-the-difference games from websites and give them to them.
In particular, books dedicated to spot-the-difference offer a wide range of themes, so gifting a book that matches each senior’s individual interests will surely be appreciated!
Pressed flower making
For your health and to build stamina, many seniors take morning and evening walks or do light warm-ups.
Along the way, don’t you sometimes come across beautiful flowers or pretty fallen leaves? Since it’s such a lovely encounter, try making pressed flowers with them.
The basic method is simple: place them between sheets of thick paper, put a weight on top, and leave it overnight.
For plants with lots of moisture, use extra layers of paper.
If you laminate them, they can become bookmarks.
It’s easy even for beginners, so give it a try!
Katamino
The target age range is an incredible 3 to 99! Have you heard of Katamino, perfect for early learning and brain training? It’s a 3D puzzle where you assemble Tetris-like pieces to form shapes, and according to the instructions, you can create as many as 30,000 different configurations.
The wooden frame where you place the pieces is marked with levels, and you can adjust the difficulty by moving the vertical slider.
It may look easy, but the more blocks you add, the more complex it becomes.
It’s an ideal brain-training game that will make your free time fly by.
plastic model kit
Plastic model kits have been a popular craft both in the past and present, with a wide range of types available—from character kits like Gundam to models of real-world things such as airplanes, cars, and castles.
Some kits can be difficult to build, so be sure to choose one that matches your skill level.
While some people are particular about gluing and painting, the technology behind plastic models has advanced, so simply following the instructions can still produce a high-quality result.
If you want to further improve the quality, think about what you can do yourself; as you do, you’ll gradually acquire more techniques.
Reading
People have long lamented that “young people are drifting away from print,” and with the recent advance of digitalization, “drifting away from books” and “drifting away from paper” have also become hot topics.
Whether on paper or digital, engaging with books is a way to meet a new version of yourself.
If you don’t usually read, why not take this opportunity to pick up a book? I recommend starting with the timeless classics: Seicho Matsumoto–style travel mysteries by Kyotaro Nishimura, historical novels by Ryotaro Shiba, and science fiction by Sakyo Komatsu.
I hope you discover a wonderful book.
Puzzle coloring
It looks like nothing more than a complex pattern at first, but as you fill in the specified colors, an image emerges.
Each piece has a number, and by coloring according to that number, the picture gradually appears.
You can’t tell which pieces connect in the same color until you look at the numbers, so take your time coloring and enjoy the process of the mysterious pattern transforming into a picture.
Because it requires meticulous work to find the same numbers, you’re likely to feel a sense of accomplishment when it’s complete.