[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!
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- For seniors: Fun shiritori—enjoyable and easy to play
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[For Seniors] Fun for a long time! Whiteboard activities with brain-training elements (31–40)
Fill-in-the-blank with a spring theme
It’s a game where you draw circles on a whiteboard—some with blank spaces and some with letters—and have players think of words by filling in the blanks.
While making use of the letters already written, they come up with words of that length.
The broad range of choices helps stimulate the brain.
If you prepare the letters in advance with a spring theme, players can enjoy a sense of spring while still having plenty of options to form words, which is recommended.
The difficulty changes depending on the number of letters and where the blanks are placed, so try various patterns to have players think of different words.
Kanji addition
Here’s a recreation activity you can do right away using a whiteboard, without any special preparation.
Take a kanji character, split it into two parts to make a quiz, and have participants guess the original kanji and write it on the whiteboard.
It serves as a bit of brain exercise and may help people recall kanji they’ve forgotten.
Writing directly on the whiteboard also engages fine motor skills.
It’s a good idea to prepare a notebook of kanji to split in advance and use it as your question bank.
Stroke Count Guessing
Do you still handwrite characters? Many people may find themselves writing less if they don’t really need to.
In times like that, a fun recommendation is a stroke-order quiz.
For each kanji, guess which stroke number corresponds to the part drawn in red.
Start with simple characters that have fewer strokes, and then gradually increase the number of strokes or mix in kanji that make you think, “What was the stroke order again?” Don’t worry if you make mistakes—use those moments to learn or jog your memory.
Fill-in crossword
This is a game where you complete a crossword puzzle that already has most of its letters filled in by filling the remaining blanks.
Thinking about which letters work both across and down, and then placing them one after another, helps stimulate your brain.
The more blanks there are to fill, the higher the difficulty, so encourage players to gradually try puzzles with multiple blank patterns.
Sometimes the letters alone won’t lead you to the answer, so in those cases, it’s recommended to reveal hints about the meanings of the words that go across and down.
Word Calculation Game
Here is a recreational activity where you try calculating words using the rules of arithmetic.
First, present a few example problems that allow people to discover the rule, and write their answers.
Then, once you feel people have grasped the rule, present the actual problems.
If no one can figure out the rule, it can get dull, so it’s a good idea to offer additional hints if necessary.
If you prepare the problems in advance, you can start without any special materials, so it’s something you can enjoy even in short spare moments.
[For Seniors] Long-lasting, fun activities! Whiteboard games with brain-training elements (41–50)
Naka-tori
Shiritori is a game that many people have probably tried at least once.
A spin-off of shiritori is “Naka-tori.” Unlike shiritori, which links the last letter, Naka-tori links the letter right in the middle of the word.
Because you only use words with an odd number of letters—1, 3, 5, and so on—the way you think about it changes and adds an extra challenge.
It’s great brain training and makes the thinking process more fun! Words with voiced marks (dakuten) can also be treated as their unvoiced counterparts.
Start slowly using a whiteboard, and once you get the hang of it, try adding a time limit to make it more exciting.
What kanji am I writing?
A simple yet profound kanji-guessing quiz game.
You sometimes see it on quiz shows, too.
This version is highly recommended as a recreation activity that makes great use of a whiteboard! The quizmaster writes various kanji, and players guess which character it is.
The irregular thinking involved—like changing the stroke order—adds stimulation and makes it fun.
A single character works well, but using compound words (the “jukugo” version) with more characters can also be interesting.
In that case, you can adjust based on the guesser’s strengths—for example, letting them answer after one character is completed, or writing multiple characters in parallel.