Creative Brain Games
After several years of dormancy, I have begun to revive and update the content of Creative Brain Games. My intent is to review a variety of readily available games, books, and other products that can help us keep our aging brains active in lighthearted ways. Most can be used intergenerationally, and most can be adapted for people living with dementia. My goal is always to help others make new connections in their brains and new social connections through sharing.
Listed below are Amazon affiliate links to each product, but you are under no obligation to order them through this means.
The Wonderful O
A lipogram is a word game that consists of writing new material or rewriting existing material by leaving out certain letters of the alphabet. (Lipogram comes from a Greek word meaning “missing letter.”) One of the most famous practitioners was A. Ross Eckler, who...
Apples to Apples
I am partial to games that encourage imagination and foster fun. One game that does both is Apples to Apples from Out of the Box Games (https://ootbgames.com/). It’s also a vocabulary-builder. The premise is simple: One person serves as a judge – players take turns in...
Spot It!
I first reviewed Spot It! more than a decade ago, and I still like it. Each of the 55 cards in the round deck depicts 8 various-sized symbols such as an anchor, baby bottle, ice cube, zebra, heart, moon, cactus, and ladybug – with a total of 57 objects in all. Take...
Gabbing about Gobblet
Gobblet is usually described as a combination Connect Four and Tic-Tac-Toe in which players “gobble up” their opponent’s pieces. However, you won’t gain calories or work up a sweat while you give your brain a strategic workout with this tabletop game. Gobblet is like...
UpWords
Many years ago as a young mother, I was big into cooperative games. The other members of my competitive family were not. They played Scrabble® ruthlessly, entirely focused on points, while I was interested in filling the whole board, increasing my vocabulary, and...
Do You Doodle?
People have a tendency to think they need to solve puzzles created by others – crosswords, Sudoku – to keep their brains active, but using your imagination is even better. The goal in brain building is to create new dendrites – new connections – in your brain, and...