[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
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- 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] Activities to Enhance Oral Function. Enjoyable and Easy (51–60)
PET bottle blowing
The function of recognizing food and then moving it through the mouth and down into the stomach is called eating and swallowing function.
This time, we’ll introduce a training method that can help improve this function.
All you need is a plastic bottle.
It’s called the plastic bottle blowing exercise: you exhale through a straw into a plastic bottle filled with water to make bubbles.
This technique is well known, but we’ll add a bit of resistance.
Make a hole near the top of the bottle and insert the straw through it.
By adjusting how tightly you screw on the cap, you can change the resistance when you bubble.
This lets you not only apply a constant force but also modulate the force.
It’s a worthwhile challenge for older adults, too.
In conclusion
This time, we introduced exercises and activities related to oral functions. They included not only tongue and throat exercises, but also whole-body movements. Did you find any that seem doable? It’s great to start with something fun, like rhythmic exercises or game-like activities! You’ll feel the benefits as you keep it up!