One out of every three seniors feels lonely. Are you looking for new ways to entertain a bunch of elderly people? Do you need a new activity to entertain a group of kids? Why not get them both together for some fun and games?
Intergenerational games might seem like a chore at first glance. After all, you need to figure out fun games for seniors and kids alike. You need games both age groups will find entertaining and engaging.
Fortunately, we’ve already got a list of activities for you! Check out this list of fun activities kids and seniors are sure to enjoy.
1. Cooking Games
Baking and cooking can become fun games for seniors and kids alike. Cooking, in many ways, is like a mini-puzzle. People have to follow a roadmap to achieve a goal; in this case, the roadmap is the recipe and the goal is a delicious meal.
Doing this together opens a ton of great opportunities. The elderly can serve as safety supervisors and can give advice. The younger participants can do all the physical work and they learn how to cook in the process.
2. Wii Sports
Video games aren’t only for kids. Many games nowadays target adults. The best ones, however, are video games that both kids and the elderly can play together.
No other game brings people together better than Wii Sports. It’s on an older system, the Nintendo Wii, which means it doesn’t cost much nowadays.
The game also uses basic motion controls, making it ideal for seniors who can’t use traditional video game controllers due to slower reflexes.
Also, it works for people who aren’t literate with video game language. It’s not hard for kids or the elderly to play mini-games based on tennis, bowling, or golf.
3. Gameshows
Ever seen Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune? How about shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
These game shows use simple mechanics that both the young and old can understand. They also rely less on physical prowess and more on quick thinking or general knowledge. It can be fun to pair children with a few seniors and let them compete.
4. Tabletop Games
Games like Dungeons and Dragons or No, Thank You Evil can become amazing experiences for the young and old. These games only require pencils, dice, and paper, as well as a basic guide to the rules. Everything else is all about imagination.
You can look at tabletop games as impromptu theater, but with dice. These games aren’t competitive either; instead, the goal is to work together and solve a mystery or save the day. It’s a cooperative, helping hands game for everyone.
Let the players become heroes and tell their tales.
5. Card Games
Card games serve as an excellent bridge between generations, facilitating bonding and engagement between seniors and children. Playing such games not only offers cognitive benefits for seniors but also imparts strategic thinking and patience to younger players. Spades, for instance, is a game that both seniors and children can enjoy together, learning the strategic gameplay of bidding and partnership while having fun. For those who may not have a deck of cards on hand, the game of Spades can be enjoyed online at Spades.co, allowing family members to connect digitally and continue the tradition of card-playing across distances.
6. Interactive Books
Reading or listening to audiobooks are great ideas to get children and the elderly together, but these activities don’t count as fun games. Fortunately, there is a workaround: “choose your own adventure” books!
These are books that allow the reader to make a choice. For example, the narrative on one page might end with the readers having to choose between a red door and a blue one. Picking a door requires jumping to a different page, and there the readers discover whether they made the right choice or not.
Reading counts as one of the most recommended fun activities for the elderly. If they are too old to read, or if the kids with them don’t know how to read yet, you can easily have someone along to read for them.
7. Arts and Crafts
Sometimes, it’s more fun to do something relaxing and a bit meditative. You can have kids and seniors work on paintings, cross-stitch projects, or bracelets. It might even be a good idea to sell their work for a charity or to raise funds for the retirement home.
8. Classic Boardgames
You can never go wrong with Chess, Checkers, Monopoly, Scrabble, Bingo, and Boggle. These games have stood the test of time and pretty much everyone, both young and old, know how to play them. They’re also easy to learn, ensuring newcomers can quickly get up to speed.
Scrabble, Boggle, and Bingo are perhaps the best board games for seniors and young kids. The rules are simple and don’t require too much effort, but still provide a decent amount of challenge.
9. Charades
Looking for fun games for seniors and kids that don’t require expensive tools or gadgets? You can’t do any better than charades. If you haven’t play charades, one person picks a word and then has to pantomime clues for the other players to guess the word.
You can split the group into all sorts of ways. You can have the elderly grouped to compete against the kids, have mixed teams, or remove scoring and simply prioritize the fun.
10. Escape Rooms
Escape rooms are quite popular nowadays. These are rooms where the players willingly get locked inside, and the only way to escape — hence the name — is to solve a series of puzzles.
Most escape rooms follow a “one key, one puzzle” rule. This means the players can discard clues after using them to solve a puzzle. They won’t have to go through them again when they solve the next hurdle, making the process easier and less confusing.
You can assign the seniors to focus on the logical aspect of puzzle-solving. The kids can focus on looking for clues.
11. VR Games
Virtual Reality games can become immersive environments for the young and old. One of the best VR games is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. This game requires at least two people to play, meaning you can pair one elderly with one child.
The goal is for one person to read instructions, whether on a phone or printed on paper, while the other wears the VR headset. Only the person wearing the headset sees the “bomb” and is the only person who can interact with it, but they need guidance from the person reading the manual.
Try These Fun Games for Seniors and Children!
Intergenerational games can bridge the gap between the young and old. It’s fun and educational for the kids. For the elderly, they get a reprieve from the stress of their lives.
Why stop with these fun games for seniors and kids? There are many more fun activities to try out, like picnics and listening to audiobooks.
If you need more tips for better activities or lifestyle guides, we’ve got it all. Check out our blog today!
I love reading books with children. Recently, we have been carried away by Greek mythology. My daughter’s favorite character is Antigone. She even wrote an essay about her, which I posted on my blog https://studydriver.com/antigone-essay/ Such tales help children move from children’s books to classic novels and short stories.