[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!
- [For Seniors] Spice Up Your Usual Oral Exercises! Patakara Exercises and Tongue Twisters
- [For Seniors] Boost Oral Function with Tongue Twisters! Recommended Picks to Try
- For seniors: Fun shiritori—enjoyable and easy to play
- [For Seniors] Stay Healthy Through Your Mouth with the A-I-U-BE Exercises!
- [For Seniors] Recommended Easy Strength Training
- [For Seniors] Oral Exercises to Keep Eating Deliciously and Enjoyably
- [For Seniors] Lively Wordplay Game: Fun Recreation for Elderly Care
- [For Seniors] Hand and finger play roundup: Finger exercises that lead to brain training
- [For Seniors] Core Training: Recommended Simple Rehabilitation
- For Seniors: Effective Recreation for Preventing Care Needs—Have Fun While Staying Healthy
- [For Seniors] Fun! Games and Ideas to Boost Memory
- [For Seniors] Extremely Effective Brain Training! A Fun Collection of Hand Games
- [Recommended for Seniors] Simple and Fun Gesture Game Prompts
[For Seniors] Games to Enhance Oral Function: Enjoyable Activities (31–40)
red paper roll, blue paper roll, yellow paper roll
Tongue twisters often consist of strings of hard-to-pronounce words.
“Aka-makigami ao-makigami ki-makigami” (red scroll paper, blue scroll paper, yellow scroll paper) is also a sequence of tricky words.
By the way, makigami refers to paper made by joining together sheets of hansetsu paper (a tall, narrow paper) side by side to make a long roll.
It’s sold in scroll form.
This tongue twister lines up red, blue, and yellow scroll paper.
It looks easy at first glance, but when you try to say it repeatedly, it becomes hard to pronounce.
As a tip, if you pause slightly between the color names—like red or blue—and the word “makigami,” it should be a bit easier to say.
Try it together with older adults.
Click-Clack Brain Training Exercises
To stay healthy, you need adequate nutrition, and the ability to eat—especially chewing power—is essential.
With the “Kachi-Kachi Brain-Training Exercise,” you can strengthen your chewing while also stimulating your brain and enjoying the process.
It’s simple: open your mouth wide and close it, biting so your teeth make a clicking sound.
Bite 15 times while silently counting 1, 2, 3 in your head, and clap on every multiple of 3.
Just this alone helps maintain overall oral and dental health and stimulates the brain.
It’s recommended because you can do it anytime, anywhere, regardless of the number of people.
Throat training with a rubber ball and a plastic bottle
Aspiration pneumonia, which is common among older adults.
Aspiration pneumonia is an inflammation that occurs when saliva or food accidentally enters the windpipe, allowing bacteria to invade the lungs.
The movement of the Adam’s apple, which is important for preventing aspiration, is said to decline from the 60s to 70s.
Here, we introduce training exercises that are expected to help prevent aspiration.
For example, you can hold a rubber ball under your chin or grip the mouth of an empty plastic bottle (with the cap removed).
It’s great that you can train using familiar items without any special equipment.
Let’s work on daily exercises to help prevent aspiration.
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.