[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] Fun Brain Training! Lively Whiteboard Activities
- [For Seniors] Brain-Training Recreation Using a Whiteboard
- [For Seniors] Test Your Memory!? Ideas for Whiteboard Games
- [For Seniors] Brain Training with a Whiteboard! Fill-in-the-Blank Exercises & Quizzes
- [For Seniors] Easy and fun seated activities you can do in your room
- [For Seniors] Brain Training Recommended for Dementia Prevention
- [For Seniors] Fun Recreational Activities Without Equipment
- [For Seniors] A Brain-Training, Crowd-Pleasing Word Search Game
- For seniors: Fun shiritori—enjoyable and easy to play
- Hand games that liven things up for seniors—also great brain training
- [For Seniors] Today’s Recommended Activity: Fun and Engaging
- [For Seniors] Recreational Activities Enjoyable in Large Groups
- [For Seniors] Enjoy the Cold Winter! Seated Activities You Can Do
[For Seniors] Long-lasting, fun activities! Whiteboard games with brain-training elements (41–50)
A Quiz on Difficult Kanji Related to Food
When you go into a Chinese restaurant, of course there’s a menu, but many items like ramen and gyoza are written in katakana, right? It’s the same with sushi toppings—things like aji or sanma aren’t written in kanji.
Even for foods we eat often and see all the time, when they’re suddenly written in kanji, we often can’t read them.
So how about everyone trying their hand at difficult-to-read kanji? Even graduates of famous universities or former teachers might struggle quite a bit! There are lots of quizzes uploaded on video sites, so be sure to make good use of them.
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.
Fukuwarai (a traditional Japanese “lucky laugh” face-making game)
How about trying Fukuwarai, a traditional game that has been loved since ancient times? Normally, you play Fukuwarai on a sheet of paper about A4 size.
However, I recommend scaling it up and doing it on a whiteboard.
That way, it’s easy to move the parts around, and people watching from the back can enjoy it too.
If you’d like a slightly more unusual recreation, you can also customize the Fukuwarai design.
Using the face of a mutual friend or someone everyone knows tends to make it more exciting.
Common Radical Fill-in Quiz
If you want to tackle a slightly more complex task, I also recommend the common radical fill-in quiz.
A radical is a component that makes up a kanji.
For example, the common radical in “松” (matsu), “村” (mura), and “林” (hayashi) is the tree radical (kihen).
First, pick out many kanji that share a common radical, then remove the radical and line up what remains to create the quiz.
Alternatively, you can use YouTube videos and the like.
In that case, adjust the difficulty by pausing the video to give time to think, and so on.
Fill-in-the-blank Kanji Problems
Many young people these days struggle with kanji due to the widespread use of computers and smartphones.
So, drawing on the idea of ‘skills once learned,’ let’s have seniors enjoy a “kanji fill-in-the-blank” game.
You place a single kanji character in the center, then set one blank each to its top, bottom, left, and right.
This time, using the kanji 地, you create two-character compounds like 土地 (land), 湿地 (wetland), 現地 (on-site), and 地下 (underground).
It’s like a kanji version of a crossword puzzle.
Depending on whether you make the blank come before or after the central character, the variations increase, making it great brain training as well.
Making kanji
It’s a recreational activity often seen on quiz shows where you add a certain number of strokes to a specific character to create a different kanji.
For example, by adding two strokes to the character 口, you can form 目 or 旦—surprising kanji that you might not realize until you actually write them, which makes it exciting.
Because the rules are simple, it’s easy to remember and adapt, so it’s sure to provide long-lasting enjoyment if done at senior facilities.
It’s a brain-stimulating game that tests your ability to visualize combining characters in your head and your memory for recalling kanji.
