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[For Seniors] Play Long and Have Fun! A Whiteboard Activity with Brain-Training Elements
Whiteboard recreation activities are popular in senior facilities.
Because everyone can get excited together, they help improve communication among seniors.
They don’t require physical exertion, so it’s easy to participate, which is a nice plus.
Among whiteboard activities, we’ve carefully selected popular brain-training games that you can enjoy without getting bored.
Even fun activities can become repetitive if they’re always the same, right? The whiteboard activities we’re introducing this time are designed to prevent boredom by changing and customizing the prompts.
They help stimulate seniors’ brains, so be sure to give them a try!
[For Seniors] Long-Lasting, Fun Activities! Whiteboard Recreation with Brain-Training Elements (1–10)
Anything Ranking
The “Anything Ranking” game, where you guess the rankings for a set theme, is a recreation you can enjoy for a long time depending on the theme and how many places you rank.
Focusing on a single topic that you don’t usually think about helps stimulate the brain, so it’s recommended for older adults.
However, be sure to choose themes that will always yield an answer if participants think it through, tailored to their age group.
If you want to enjoy it quickly and casually, limit the ranking to about fifth place—it’s an easy game to fit into short breaks.
Word Brain Training
If you don’t have chances to use words in daily life, it becomes harder to recall them, and using a variety of words regularly leads to smoother conversations.
This game focuses on recalling and producing words; it tests your memory of vocabulary and your ability to retrieve it.
On a whiteboard, you write a prompt like “kan,” then think of letters that can connect to it to complete as many words as possible.
Figuring out which kanji the hiragana keyword can be converted into can also serve as a hint.
Setting a time limit helps players focus and come up with words more effectively, so that kind of rule is recommended.
What ◯◯ comes with ◯◯?
It’s a game that stimulates the brain by coming up with words based on specified combinations of Japanese syllabary sounds and themes.
For example, if the prompt is “animals that start with A (あ),” you might say ashika (sea lion) or araiguma (raccoon).
The more people you have, the more varied the answers will be, making it even more exciting.
Since you can create endless prompts by changing the combinations, you can enjoy it with a fresh feeling every time.
Once you get used to it, you can make it more challenging by using two starting characters instead of one, or by requiring the specified syllable to come at the end rather than the beginning.
With a little creativity, it’s a recreational activity you can enjoy indefinitely.
Place Name Brain Training
Geography Brain Training is a game where you can have a lively time together while giving your brain a workout.
Players take turns naming place names that match a given theme, and anyone who can’t answer drops out.
Be careful not to make the theme too difficult, or it can kill the motivation.
If participants are from different regions, it’s best to choose place names that everyone is likely to know, such as the 23 wards of Tokyo.
Alternatively, you can have players name prefectures.
Character Count Word Brain Training
Do Japanese people handle Japanese freely and effortlessly? It can feel that way, but this “word-count brain training” game makes you think, “Maybe not…” The rules are simple: you answer with words constrained by length—1 character, 2 characters, 3 characters, and so on.
For example: hi (fire), kame (turtle), susuki (pampas grass), Honkon (Hong Kong) as you go 1, 2, 3, 4 characters.
Add plus-alpha themes like “foods” or “living things” to make it an advanced-level activity.
It’s also great that using small whiteboards lets each person answer freely.
Phonetic transcription in the Japanese syllabary (gojūon)
The 50-syllable transcription game has simple rules, so anyone can enjoy it casually! Here’s how it works: the quizmaster writes “a i u e o” vertically and sets a theme, like “food.” Then, respondents take turns naming foods starting with each syllable in order—beginning with “a,” for example “anpan”—and write them on the whiteboard.
The next person answers with a food starting with “i,” and so on.
If you want to make it easier, you can switch the hiragana row, or customize the theme to something like “place names”—that’s also recommended!
Making words with the a-row and ka-row
Games like “how many words can you make using each hiragana from the 50-sound chart exactly once” or “how many words can you list that start with a” are examples of brain-training games that involve making words from hiragana.
The rules are simple: using the ten hiragana from the A and KA rows, see how many words you can create.
For example, ai → 愛 (love), ike → 池 (pond), uo → 魚 (fish)… you can probably come up with a lot.
You can also switch to other rows, like KA and SA, and enjoy it that way too—in other words, it’s a game you can enjoy endlessly.
To avoid duplicates, please write your answers on a whiteboard!