Lovely senior life

[For Seniors] Collection of Pet Bottle Cap Puzzle Challenges

Social worker / Care workermoko
My name is Moko, a mother of three who admired my mother and worked in the care industry as a care worker and as a medical social worker (MSW) in a hospital. I will be drawing on my previous experience to write mainly about caregiving. Thank you in advance.
Worked as a certified care worker for 17 years.Nanaka
I’ve been working as a certified care worker for 17 years. I’m Nanaka, a caregiving web writer. I decided to pursue this profession because I wanted a job that would help people. Having worked in day care for many years, I’ve experienced a wide variety of recreational activities. Exercise set to music, in particular, always created a cheerful atmosphere and was very well received. I’d be delighted to continue delivering writing that resonates with readers through caregiving-related articles. Thank you for your support.

There are many recreational activities that make use of plastic bottle caps, aren’t there? Among them, have you heard of the plastic bottle cap puzzle, which is recommended for preventing dementia? It’s a recreation that uses sheets with pictures or letters and matching caps that have the corresponding pictures or letters on them.

Because small caps are used, it helps with hand and finger rehabilitation and also stimulates the brain.

In this article, we introduce a variety of prompts you can use for plastic bottle cap puzzles.

There are a wide range of ideas—from simple pictures and numbers to national flags and difficult kanji—so please choose prompts that match the physical and mental condition of the elderly participants.

[For Seniors] Collection of PET Bottle Cap Puzzle Challenges (21–30)

the Twelve Zodiac Signs (the Chinese/Japanese zodiac)

Animated Picture Book of a Folktale: How the Twelve Zodiac Animals Began

the Twelve Zodiac Signs (the Chinese/Japanese zodiac)

The animals that represent each year—the twelve zodiac signs—are also notable for being written in special Chinese characters.

This is a puzzle game that helps you think about and memorize those zodiac signs and their corresponding characters.

Prepare a sheet with illustrations of the twelve zodiac animals, and have players choose caps labeled with the matching characters for each illustration.

If players place the ones they know in order, the number of choices narrows, making it easier to reach the correct answers—that’s another key point.

You can also enjoy the reverse pattern: give the character and have players pick the matching illustration.

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Kanji with the fish radical

[Complete Edition] Collection of Fish-Radical Kanji: 75 Questions [Difficulty: ★★★★★]

Kanji with the fish radical

A recreation activity that’s booming in popularity—because it uses your fingertips and may help prevent dementia—is placing caps with kanji written on them over the same kanji printed on a sheet.

It really gets lively! Especially with fish-related kanji that have similar shapes.

Tuna (鮪), sardine (鰯), sea bream (鯛), and bonito (鰹) are just barely familiar, but crocodile (鰐), sea bass (鱸), herring (鰊), and sandfish (鰰) have so many strokes that you might hesitate when matching them to the sheet.

In exchange events with students and the like, it could be fun to write the readings on the backs of the caps and try the game using only the readings.

Enjoy it from the setup stage where you write the kanji on the caps!

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In conclusion

We introduced some recommended bottle-cap puzzle prompts for older adults.

Handling small plastic bottle caps helps train dexterity and stimulate the brain.

Some prompts are simple, where you just match identical patterns, while others include a quiz-like element in which the patterns on the sheet and the caps differ.

Since the difficulty varies by prompt, prepare several pattern types in advance and choose the prompts to suit each participant!