Games that liven up group homes. Fun recreational activities.
Group homes are senior care facilities with the charm of a warm, homelike atmosphere where residents can feel as if they’re at home.
Recreation is an essential part of everyday life in such settings.
Since most residents are older adults living with dementia, you’ll want to offer activities that help stimulate both mind and body.
For those seniors, how about trying “games and recreational activities that liven up the group home”?
This article introduces recreational ideas that are useful in the daily lives of older adults.
Care workers, please use this article as a reference.
- [For Seniors] Simple Recreational Activities You Can Enjoy While Seated
- [For Seniors] Simple Tabletop Games: Fun and Engaging Recreational Activities
- [For Seniors] Easy and fun seated activities you can do in your room
- [For Seniors] Fun Recreational Activities Without Equipment
- [November Health Topic] Indoor Recreation Ideas for Older Adults
- [For Seniors] Enjoyable Indoor Activities! Recreations and Games That Engage the Mind and Body
- [For Seniors] Today’s Recommended Activity: Fun and Engaging
- Hand games that liven things up for seniors—also great brain training
- [For Seniors] Have Fun! A Collection of Group Game Recreation Ideas
- [For Seniors] Recreational Activities Enjoyable in Large Groups
- For Seniors: Effective Recreation for Preventing Care Needs—Have Fun While Staying Healthy
- [For Seniors] Fun Small-Group Recreation
- [For Seniors] Introducing Recreational Activities Anyone Can Enjoy at Geriatric Health Facilities!
Games that liven up group homes: Fun recreation (61–70)
palindrome
Do you know what a palindrome is? A palindrome is a sentence that reads the same forward and backward.
For example, “たいやきやいた” reads the same backward.
Let’s all try coming up with palindromes like this.
You can also prepare a set of characters in advance and rearrange them.
In that case, it may be easier to reveal the central part and then fit the characters around it.
There are YouTube videos that pose such challenges, so check them out for reference.
Finger-Tip Rec: Ball Exercises to Build Grip Strength
This is a recreational activity focused on gripping a ball to build grip strength.
In pairs, you will perform two movements: trying to pull out a fixed ball and passing the ball to each other.
While consciously gripping the ball firmly with one hand, add the pulling and passing movements to train other areas as well.
By carefully observing your partner’s movements, this exercise also helps you become more aware of dynamic vision, concentration, and force control.
Text Color Card Game
This is a karuta-style card game where players focus on the reading of the characters and the colors on the cards to find the one that matches what is read aloud.
It tests your ability to decide whether the cue refers to the character or the color, and your judgment in locating it among the cards in front of you—so your thinking speed is key.
Clear phrasing by the reader is also important; be mindful to use concise expressions like “the character is red and the color is green.” The more cards with the same character in different colors are mixed in, the harder it becomes to judge the correct answer, so it’s recommended to gradually increase the number of cards as players get used to the game.
Easy-Peasy Balloon Volleyball
When you play balloon volleyball, you might sometimes hit it too hard and it flies off in an unexpected direction.
In those moments, attaching a string to the balloon so you can control it will help you keep the rally going longer.
It’s a simple tweak—just attach some plastic ribbon to the balloon and move it—but you’ll need to be thoughtful about how you guide it and how much force you use.
If you pull too hard on the string, the balloon’s movement can become restricted or it may fall faster, so be sure to apply gentle, controlled force.
Bomb GO
This is a game where players kick crumpled newspaper balls in two colors, aiming to get their team’s balls into the opponent’s side.
Sit in two facing rows, and mark a white line in the middle with tape to divide the territory.
Through the game, encourage plenty of leg movement, such as moving the feet back and forth to kick and stretching the legs to reach distant balls.
If you draw the white line at a distance that the feet can’t reach and place some balls there as well, players will also focus on finely controlling their foot movements by bumping nearby balls to move others—this setup is highly recommended too.
Milk Carton Craft: Rock-Paper-Scissors Bingo
In this game, whoever wins rock-paper-scissors places their own marker—made from a milk carton—on a grid, and the first to complete three lines wins.
Because placement depends on the outcome of rock-paper-scissors, you get a different kind of mind game than the usual take-turns format.
Not only is placement strategy important, but figuring out how to win at rock-paper-scissors also becomes a key factor.
If there’s a big skill gap in rock-paper-scissors, it’s a good idea to add handicaps, such as changing the number of lines needed to win.
Get Excited! Beanbag Toss Bingo Game
It’s a cooperative game where everyone aims for bingo, incorporating the action of tossing beanbags.
Nine baskets are placed in the center of a seated circle, and players throw beanbags to land them on top of each basket.
If you place five or more beanbags, you clear that basket, and you work toward bingo using the baskets you’ve cleared.
In addition to adjusting the strength of each throw, be sure to focus on cooperating so your beanbags don’t collide with your teammates’.
It’s a game that lets everyone enjoy striving for a common goal while getting plenty of physical activity.