[For Seniors] Introducing Whiteboard Activities to Enjoy in Winter!
In the cold winter season, older adults may be reluctant to go outside.
They’re likely to do indoor recreational activities instead.
In that case, you’ll want to incorporate activities that don’t require much preparation.
Here, we’ll introduce whiteboard recreation ideas themed around winter.
By adding winter elements to the whiteboard activities you usually do, you can enjoy the season while participating.
Of course, they’re also effective for dementia prevention.
Please use these ideas as a reference!
- [For Seniors] Play Long and Have Fun! A Whiteboard Activity with Brain-Training Elements
- [For Seniors] Brain-Training Recreation Using a Whiteboard
- [For Seniors] Test Your Memory!? Ideas for Whiteboard Games
- [For Seniors] Enjoy the Cold Winter! Seated Activities You Can Do
- [For Seniors] Winter Haiku: Introducing Beautiful Masterpieces by Famous Haiku Poets
- [For Seniors] Get Through the Chilly February! Recommended Health-Themed Recreations
- Recreation Activities Effective for Long-Term Care Prevention for Seniors
- For Seniors: Fun and Engaging December Event and Recreation Ideas
- [For Seniors] Ideas for Winter Wall Decorations and Hanging Ornaments: Introducing Projects That Are Easy to Try
- [For Seniors] Fun Winter Activities: Recreation and Games
- [November Health Topic] Indoor Recreation Ideas for Older Adults
- [For seniors] January health topics: A roundup of popular recreational activities from exercises and crafts to New Year’s games
- [For Seniors] Introducing Whiteboard Activities That Liven Up Spring!
[For Seniors] Introducing Whiteboard Activities to Enjoy in Winter! (11–20)
Brain training using winter-themed words and onomatopoeia
This is a recreation activity that adds onomatopoeia to a word-association quiz like “What comes to mind when you think of ◯◯?”.
Set the topic to “What comes to mind when you think of winter?” and have participants call out as many words as they can.
For example, they might say words like snow, heater/stove, cold.
After you’ve gathered about ten, stop there, and next express each word with sounds.
This is the onomatopoeia part.
For snow, maybe “shin-shin” (softly falling), for a stove “pachi-pachi” (crackling), and for cold “byū-byū” (blustery wind).
There’s no single correct answer for onomatopoeia, so discuss and find the expressions that feel right together.
Arunashi quiz
It’s a game where you’re shown words divided into two groups—“has” and “doesn’t have”—and you have to figure out what they have in common.
The tricky part is that the shared feature can take many forms, such as something that appears when you add a word before or after, or a property hidden within the word itself.
The breadth of possible commonalities makes it challenging, but it also stimulates the brain by encouraging diverse approaches.
Since that same breadth can make it hard, let’s provide hints gradually to help guide the thinking process.
If you try reading the words out loud, you might notice something that brings you closer to the answer.
Kanji addition
Here’s a recreation activity you can do right away using a whiteboard, without any special preparation.
Take a kanji character, split it into two parts to make a quiz, and have participants guess the original kanji and write it on the whiteboard.
It serves as a bit of brain exercise and may help people recall kanji they’ve forgotten.
Writing directly on the whiteboard also engages fine motor skills.
It’s a good idea to prepare a notebook of kanji to split in advance and use it as your question bank.
Picture shiritori
There’s a word shiritori activity using a whiteboard, but let’s try turning the words into drawings instead.
Ask the older adults to provide words that form a shiritori chain.
Convert each word into a picture and draw it on the whiteboard.
When the shiritori ends, you can play an even more fun game.
Cover the drawings on the whiteboard with paper and have the older adults recall them.
Show only the first drawing, and then have everyone think about what word comes next.
Please guide the activity by giving hints and incorporating episodes from the shiritori session as you go.
Let’s write the same answer on the whiteboard.
Here’s an introduction to a game where the questioner and the answerer try to come up with the same answer.
For example, the questioner asks, “What’s a green vegetable?” The goal is to match the questioner’s answer with the answers from the answerers—like bell peppers, cabbage, or cucumbers.
If the answerers’ guess matches, the questioner scores points; if it doesn’t, the answerers score points—an interesting twist.
When they hear the prompt, answerers will likely imagine various related items.
If you play in teams or groups, it gets more exciting if you choose prompts that are easy for the other side to picture, or make it a two-choice question to make matching easier.
Fill-in crossword
This is a game where you complete a crossword puzzle that already has most of its letters filled in by filling the remaining blanks.
Thinking about which letters work both across and down, and then placing them one after another, helps stimulate your brain.
The more blanks there are to fill, the higher the difficulty, so encourage players to gradually try puzzles with multiple blank patterns.
Sometimes the letters alone won’t lead you to the answer, so in those cases, it’s recommended to reveal hints about the meanings of the words that go across and down.
[For Seniors] Introducing Whiteboard Activities to Enjoy in Winter! (21–30)
What is a ____ that starts with ____?
Here’s a brain-training quiz that you can enjoy with a large group as long as you have a whiteboard.
For example, let’s say you make a quiz like, “What are some ___ that start with ___?” First, you put a letter in the first blank.
Then you put a category in the second blank.
For instance, if you put “i” in the first blank and “foods” in the second, the quiz becomes: “What foods start with ‘i’?” Have everyone answer in turn.
If you say, “Let’s try to come up with 10,” everyone will think hard.
That’s what makes it a brain workout.