[For Seniors] Fun Brain Training! Lively Mind Exercises
Activities like games and brain training exercises conducted in senior facilities—often called “mental workouts”—are said to help prevent dementia or slow its progression.
So this time, we’re introducing “mental workouts for seniors”!
Mental workouts not only provide a sense of accomplishment when a problem is solved and activate brain functions, but they also play an important role in creating opportunities for communication with other seniors.
They are also recommended as a way to relieve stress for seniors who may fall into repetitive daily routines.
By adjusting the difficulty level to suit each senior’s condition and adding creative touches to make the activities easier to engage with, you can further increase their sense of satisfaction.
Try incorporating them into your recreation time or daily routine.
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[For Seniors] Fun Brain Training! Lively Mental Exercises (111–120)
Spring Creatures Quiz
Spring, when the weather starts to warm up, is a time when animals become more active and plants grow vigorously, and their lively presence can make us feel a sense of joy.
This is a quiz themed around springtime creatures, where you look at photos and try to guess their names.
Because these are things we often see casually when the season comes, you may never have paid attention to their names.
Why not use this quiz as an opportunity to focus more closely on the nature of spring?
Quiz in a spring field
Because plants grow differently depending on the season, there are of course vegetables that thrive in spring.
This is a quiz where we show photos of such springtime vegetables and have participants guess the name of each vegetable.
As more and more types of produce are available in supermarkets year-round, this can also prompt the realization that certain vegetables are actually in season in spring.
If the answer becomes too obvious just by seeing the vegetable itself, another recommended approach is to use photos of the flowers before the vegetables have formed and have participants guess from those.
Spring Flower Quiz 2
Spring is the season when it gets warmer and animals and plants become more active, and there are flowers you often see around this time.
This is a quiz that tests how many spring-blooming plants you know by having you identify their names from photos.
Even for flowers you always see in that season, there may be some whose names you’ve never really paid attention to.
In such cases, use hints—like fill-in-the-blank names—to think them through carefully and turn it into an opportunity to gain new knowledge.
Difficult-to-read kanji of spring
This is a quiz that presents items commonly seen in spring—such as foods and animals—written in kanji, and asks you to think of their readings.
Even if you know the words, you might not often see them in kanji, and some may be more strongly associated with being written in katakana or hiragana.
The fact that they’re related to spring is a major hint, so you might find the answer by picturing springtime scenes.
It may help to consider the meanings of each kanji used and think of things associated with spring that fit those meanings.
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.
Milk Carton Edition! Word-Finding Brain Training Game
This is a game where players make words that fit a theme using hiragana cards laid out on the table.
Preparation is simple—just cut up milk cartons and stick the 50-sound syllabary onto them—so people can easily join from the setup stage.
As you add more sets of the 50 sounds, the range of words you can create expands, and the process of looking for letters takes more effort, which enhances the brain-training effect.
It could also be exciting to proceed with a cooperative pattern where players create multiple words together, leading naturally to communication.
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.