[For Seniors] Brain-Training Recreation Using a Whiteboard
In many day-service facilities, it’s common to include recreational activities designed with brain training in mind.
No matter the senior, it’s easy to get absorbed in these activities.
In this article, we’ll introduce brain-training recreations that use a whiteboard.
Whiteboard-based activities are appealing because they’re easy to understand and enjoyable regardless of group size.
They’re especially lively with larger groups and can help deepen interactions among participants.
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- [Brain Training] Lively Word Quiz for Seniors
- [For Seniors] Brain Training with a Whiteboard! Fill-in-the-Blank Exercises & Quizzes
- [For Seniors] Brain Training! Recall Quiz Collection!
- [For Seniors] Simple Recreational Activities You Can Enjoy While Seated
- [For Seniors] Lively Wordplay Game: Fun Recreation for Elderly Care
- Hand games that liven things up for seniors—also great brain training
- [For Seniors] Enjoyment at Day Care: A Roundup of Games and Recreational Activities
- [For Seniors] Fun Even Without Sight! Recreation Ideas
[For Seniors] Brain-Training Recreational Activities Using a Whiteboard (31–40)
Collecting Words
Introducing a word-gathering activity called “Kotoba Atsume Rec.” It’s most fun with about 4 to 6 people.
First is onomatopoeia—everyone names lots of sound-symbolic words like “gaku-gaku,” “peta-peta,” “waku-waku,” and so on.
It gets livelier if you go around in order and say them to a rhythm, like in the Yamanote Line Game.
Next is the “three-letter word with a circle (a specified character) in the middle” game.
For example, words with “na” in the middle—kanai, shinai, tonai—there seem to be infinite possibilities, but in practice you won’t think of that many.
In word-related games, the facilitator is key, so please use a whiteboard to keep things running smoothly!
A quiz where you guess what the initials stand for
It might have been the most popular variety show of the 1990s.
Even if you don’t know the show itself, you’ve probably heard the phrase “Magical Banana.” Yes, this brain-training game was a big hit on “Magical Zunō Power!” It uses only hiragana to depict illustrations—a quiz where intuition and flashes of insight are key.
You express faces or animals using only initial letters, targeting that sweet spot of “almost obvious but not quite,” making it a truly addictive brain workout.
No drawing skills required, so even people who aren’t good at drawing are totally fine!
A Quiz on Difficult Kanji Related to Food
When you go into a Chinese restaurant, of course there’s a menu, but many items like ramen and gyoza are written in katakana, right? It’s the same with sushi toppings—things like aji or sanma aren’t written in kanji.
Even for foods we eat often and see all the time, when they’re suddenly written in kanji, we often can’t read them.
So how about everyone trying their hand at difficult-to-read kanji? Even graduates of famous universities or former teachers might struggle quite a bit! There are lots of quizzes uploaded on video sites, so be sure to make good use of them.
Find the theme words
Find answers that match a given theme from jumbled letters.
The themes include fruits, flower names, vegetable names, animal names, food names, Japanese events, and greetings, and both the number of answers and how many you need to find gradually increase.
In the latter half, the number of letters grows, and combined with the time limit, the difficulty rises.
It’s important to stay calm and read the questions carefully.
Watching as a video works well, and turning it into a whiteboard or printed activity makes it fun for both small groups and larger groups.
It’s also recommended for recreational activities at senior facilities.
Brain training erasing letters on a whiteboard
It’s a game where the 50 Japanese syllables are written on a whiteboard, and you make words using those characters.
Each character you use is erased from the board, and the goal is to create as many words as possible.
The key point is that you can’t use the same character again, so be mindful of which characters you should leave for later as you play.
If you start without thinking, you’ll tend to use the easy characters early on, so it’s recommended to deliberately come up with words that use the more difficult characters first.
Rather than just going with whatever words come to mind, it might be better to plan with the endgame in mind as you proceed.
[For Seniors] Brain-Training Recreational Activities Using a Whiteboard (41–50)
Fuzzy Memory Quiz
This is a quiz where you’re asked to identify the exact shapes or sequences of things you casually see in everyday life.
The choice of questions—like traffic light colors or corporate logos—is an important point, and the more something blends into daily life, the harder it is to recall accurately.
If you sketch what vaguely comes to mind on a whiteboard, it can help organize your memory and bring you closer to the answer.
By retracing your own memories and clearly imagining the shapes, let’s work on stimulating your brain.
Quick and easy! Whiteboard Bingo
How about trying Whiteboard Bingo, a game you can enjoy if you have a whiteboard? Preparation is simple: draw lines on the whiteboard to create a grid.
Draw lines so that it becomes 5 squares by 5 squares.
The rules are that players are split into O and X and take turns marking the grid.
The first person to place four of the same mark in a row—vertically, horizontally, or diagonally—wins.
It’s a game that gives your brain a real workout, as you aim to block your opponent from lining up their marks while also creating your own line of four, making it perfect for mental exercise.
