[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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[For Seniors] Brain-Training Recreational Activities Using a Whiteboard (41–50)
Brain training with rock-paper-scissors
It’s a game where you create patterns that switch between rock, scissors, and paper hand shapes, then go through those different patterns in order.
The key is thinking about what shape comes next.
Having players say the shapes out loud while making them is also important; thinking, moving the hands, and speaking at the same time helps activate the brain.
Start at a slow tempo at first, then gradually increase the speed to make it more challenging.
It might be easier if you write the sequence on a board in words so players can refer to it while figuring out the shapes.
A quiz to find the odd-one-out kanji
It’s a game where you look for the odd-one-out kanji whose shape is slightly different from the others that look the same on the board.
Tracing the lined-up characters with your eyes and spotting what feels off helps stimulate the brain.
The more characters there are, the longer it takes to find the odd one out, so it’s recommended to gradually increase the number to really get your brain working.
It could also be fun to aim for missed odd ones by using patterns like kanji with many strokes or subtle differences that are easy to overlook.
Common Hiragana Fill-in-the-Blank Quiz
Let me introduce a common-hiragana fill-in-the-blank quiz that’s also effective as brain training.
In these puzzles, there are multiple blanks within a word or phrase, and you fill all the blanks with the same hiragana character.
For example, in “か○○○き,” all the blanks would be filled with “た.” One of the big attractions is that some problems can have multiple correct answers, and you can adjust the difficulty by increasing the number of letters.
Start with around four characters and gradually increase the number of blanks! It also sounds fun to line up multiple words and fill them all with the same hiragana character.
Common Radical Fill-in Quiz
If you want to tackle a slightly more complex task, I also recommend the common radical fill-in quiz.
A radical is a component that makes up a kanji.
For example, the common radical in “松” (matsu), “村” (mura), and “林” (hayashi) is the tree radical (kihen).
First, pick out many kanji that share a common radical, then remove the radical and line up what remains to create the quiz.
Alternatively, you can use YouTube videos and the like.
In that case, adjust the difficulty by pausing the video to give time to think, and so on.
Let’s find words within a word.
I’d like to introduce a game where everyone can play at the same time and get excited: a “find words inside a word” game.
In this game, you rearrange or extract letters from a given target word and see how many other words you can make.
For example, if the target is “とうもろこし” (corn), you can make words like “うし” (cow) or “しも” (frost).
Decide on a target word and a time limit, and you can compete to see who can find the most words.
You can also share with each other, saying, “Here are the words I found.”
Stroke Count Guessing
Do you still handwrite characters? Many people may find themselves writing less if they don’t really need to.
In times like that, a fun recommendation is a stroke-order quiz.
For each kanji, guess which stroke number corresponds to the part drawn in red.
Start with simple characters that have fewer strokes, and then gradually increase the number of strokes or mix in kanji that make you think, “What was the stroke order again?” Don’t worry if you make mistakes—use those moments to learn or jog your memory.
Fill-in-the-blank Kanji Problems
Many young people these days struggle with kanji due to the widespread use of computers and smartphones.
So, drawing on the idea of ‘skills once learned,’ let’s have seniors enjoy a “kanji fill-in-the-blank” game.
You place a single kanji character in the center, then set one blank each to its top, bottom, left, and right.
This time, using the kanji 地, you create two-character compounds like 土地 (land), 湿地 (wetland), 現地 (on-site), and 地下 (underground).
It’s like a kanji version of a crossword puzzle.
Depending on whether you make the blank come before or after the central character, the variations increase, making it great brain training as well.