[For Older Adults] Games to Enhance Oral Function: Enjoyable and Easy to Do
Oral functions play an important role in daily life, such as eating and speaking.
We all want to keep enjoying meals and conversations as we get older.
In this article, we’ll introduce fun and easy activities that help improve oral function.
For example, are you familiar with vowel articulation practice like “a-i-u-e-o”?
It’s a simple and enjoyable articulation exercise, and in fact, it not only enhances oral function but also helps strengthen your abdominal muscles.
We also introduce exercises that are essential for health management, so please try to find some that you feel you can do!
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[For Older Adults] Games to Enhance Oral Functions: Enjoyable Activities (21–30)
Pata-Kara exercises: tongue twisters
Here’s a method that adds the sounds “pa-ta-ka-ra” to tongue twisters so you can practice while having fun.
Start slowly, and as you get used to it, speed up—this way, people of various abilities can enjoy participating.
This exercise can help with digestion of food, prevent aspiration pneumonia, promote sterilization and disinfection through saliva secretion, and help prevent infections.
In addition, since a decline in oral function is said to increase the risk of developing dementia, it is also effective for dementia prevention.
In settings such as senior care facilities, explaining these benefits before the exercise can encourage more motivated participation.
Patakara Zoo
Introducing the idea for the Patakara Exercise: the Patakara Zoo, where you sing animal names that include the syllables “pa,” “ta,” “ka,” and “ra” to a simple melody.
As you sing names like panda, tanuki (raccoon dog), crow, and lion, you imitate their sounds and characteristics, making it easy to smile and have fun.
It can be done seated in a chair, right where you are, so it doesn’t require a special space.
It’s also recommended as a recreation activity in senior facilities.
Please give it a try!
Patakara Oral Exercises – Blue Mountains
We’d like to introduce the Pataka-ra exercises performed to the familiar song “Blue Mountains,” well known among older adults.
Pataka-ra exercises are one of the standard training methods to prevent aspiration; by strengthening the mouth and tongue, they aim to maintain and improve oral functions such as eating and swallowing.
They’re easy to do—simply pronounce “pa,” “ta,” “ka,” and “ra” in time with the music.
Doing them before meals, in sync with the music, helps you enjoy your food and supports healthy living.
They’re also recommended as oral exercises in senior care facilities.
Patakara exercises with the song ‘Back-to-Back Height Comparison’
Here’s an idea for mouth exercises using the well-known children’s song “Sekkura-be.” It’s very simple: just change the song’s lyrics to the sounds pa-ta-ka-ra and sing them out loud.
If you’re doing this in a senior care facility, it may be easier to first sing the original song once and then switch to pa-ta-ka-ra.
It’s also helpful to write the lyrics on a whiteboard or print them on paper so everyone can see them.
Doing this before meals can be especially effective in preventing choking, and practicing every day can lead to even better results.
Please give it a try!
Patakara Card Game
The Patakara exercise is one of the training methods used to prevent aspiration.
By pronouncing “pa-ta-ka-ra,” it strengthens the mouth and tongue with the goal of maintaining and improving eating and swallowing functions.
This time, we’d like to introduce a card game that makes the Patakara exercise more fun.
Create cards with letters/words using “pa-ta-ka-ra” as the keyword and place them on a table.
Flip over the top card and read the letters on it as quickly as you can.
Once you’ve read it, pass the turn to the next person.
When the next person draws a card, they read both the previous card and the new card quickly in sequence.
The third person, fourth person, and so on will have more and more cards to read.
The more players there are, the higher the difficulty—but the more exciting it gets.
Use this to help maintain your oral health!
Whole-body relaxation exercises
Let’s relax the muscles throughout the body and improve oral function.
Some of you may wonder, “Are whole-body muscles related to oral function?” It’s said that by relaxing all your muscles and getting into a calm state, blood circulation improves and mouth movements become smoother.
Relaxing your whole body doesn’t mean doing strenuous exercises that require lots of movement.
Sit in a chair and move your upper body to the right and left.
Once you get used to it, gradually start moving up and down and diagonally.
The key is to release bodily tension and move freely.
Because it can be done while seated, it seems suitable for many older adults.
voice training
The trachea used for swallowing and vocalizing is the same.
In addition to swallow training, incorporating vocalization can indirectly strengthen the throat.
So this time, we’ll introduce voice-based exercises.
Key points include engaging your core while exhaling and releasing tension in your shoulders and neck as you produce sound.
Practice making loud and soft sounds, and sustain your voice for longer periods.
With continued training, you can expect improvements such as changes in voice quality and easier voice production.
You might also try adding practice with words and sentences.