Memory Boosting Activities
Brain health, like your physical health, is important especially as you age. With the help of brain games, seniors can enhance their mental agility, memory, and problem-solving skills in a fun and effective way. This blog provides seniors with 10 memory boosting activities they can do at home!
Word Games
Word games that you can do yourself or with friends and family that are fun for all and mentally stimulating are:
- Crossword puzzles
- Word searches
- Scrabble
- Boggle
- Bananagrams
- Word jumble
Word games can help improve your concentration, cognitive reasoning, memory, vocabulary and stimulates new learning.
Sudoku
Sudoku is a puzzle that have many brain benefits including working on your local thinking process as you are absorbed in solving a puzzle. In addition, Sudoku helps with your decision making, boosts concentration, improves memory and recall, enhances spatial reasoning, improves problem solving skills, and gives a sense of accomplishment.
Memory Games
Classic memory games such as card matching are great games to strengthen your short-term memory and concentration. In more recent years, mobile apps have been developed for brain health and if you are not comfortable with a mobile app, you can find books of memory games on amazon or at your local bookstore.
Trivia Quizzes
Participating in trivia quizzes covering various topics such as history, geography, pop culture, or personal interests can encourage your recall ability and knowledge retention. If you do not feel like making up your own trivia game, you can buy games in stores or online such as “I should have known that”, “trivial pursuit”, “wits and wagers”, “Cranium” or if you have a tablet or cell phone, you can download trivia games like “trivia crack”, “Kahoot!”, “Heads up”, or “Jeopardy”.
Learning a new Skill
Challenging seniors to learn a new skill or hobby, such as playing a musical instrument, painting, knitting, gardening, or learning a new language. The process of acquiring new knowledge stimulates the brain and promotes neural connections. Additional benefits include increasing your learning speed and you could stave off dementia as learning new skills doesn’t allow the brain a chance to demyelinate which has been linked to developing dementia. Demyelination refers to the sheading of myelin which is an insulating layer that is formed around nerves, including those in the brain and spinal cord.
Brain training apps
Exploring different activities in brain training apps are specifically designed to improve memory, attention, and cognitive skills. Some popular brain training apps that are highly recommended are Luminosity, Elevate, Peak, NeuroNation, Eidetic, BrainHQ, and Einstein’s riddle logic puzzles. All of these applications have free versions and most have a premium option.
Music Therapy
Listening to music or playing a musical instrument helps stimulate memory, evoke emotions, and enhance your mood. In addition, music has been shown to improve memory recall, cognitive function, reducing anxiety levels, blood pressure, improving sleep quality and reducing pain in seniors.
Jigsaw Puzzles
Work on jigsaw puzzles individually or as a group activity. Puzzles require attention to detail, problem-solving skills, and visual-spatial reasoning, all of which are beneficial for memory enhancement
Cooking and Baking
Engage in cooking or baking activities that involve following recipes, measuring ingredients, and multitasking. Cooking stimulates the senses and enhances cognitive function while providing a fun and rewarding experience.
Journaling
Encourage seniors to keep a journal or diary to document their thoughts, experiences, and memories. Writing helps improve memory recall, emotional well-being, and self-expression.
Try some of these memory boosting activities today!
