![[For Seniors] Fun Activities That Liven Up Cool Evening Festivals and Summer Festivals](https://i.ytimg.com/vi_webp/TXlL2VMsPr4/maxresdefault.webp)
[For Seniors] Fun Activities That Liven Up Cool Evening Festivals and Summer Festivals
The big summer event, the “Cool Evening Festival.” This time, we’re introducing summer festival-style games and activities that older adults can enjoy together.
We’ve gathered classic booth games that capture the festival atmosphere, such as goldfish scooping, senbonbiki (string lottery), and target shooting.
Of course, these are all easy to run indoors at a facility.
If everyone encourages each other as they join in, it will surely become a wonderful memory.
By tailoring how each person participates, conversations will flow and the whole venue will be filled with smiles.
Summer Festival Stall-Style Games and Recreations (1–10)
Goldfish scooping
If it’s a summer cooling festival, you’ll want the atmosphere of summer festival stalls and street vendors, right? How about trying “kingyo-sukui” (goldfish scooping) to instantly boost that mood? That said, preparing real goldfish is a hassle, so you could use a goldfish scooping set instead.
You might also make the scoops (poi) a bit more durable so they don’t tear easily.
Set a time limit and see how many you can scoop within that time—turning it into a game like this will really liven things up.
Target shooting
The traditional shooting game you often see at festival stalls has been around for ages.
You hold a toy shaped like a gun, aim at snacks or toys, and if you knock one down, you win that prize—something many of us were crazy about as kids.
Let’s liven up your summer evening festival with a shooting game that brings back those childhood memories! For the targets, you could use candies or draw illustrations, and assign points based on their size.
As for the “gun,” let’s make an easy-to-handle, larger one using a roll from plastic wrap or a toilet paper tube and some rubber bands.
Newspaper Dart
Let me introduce a fun darts game you can play using newspaper.
Prepare several newspapers rolled into long, thin tubes.
Make a target with several holes, and try throwing the newspaper tubes into the holes.
The target can be made of cardboard, and you can make holes in various shapes and sizes—circles, triangles, and more—to make it even more enjoyable.
You can also assign points to the target.
In regular darts, you throw at the point zones on the target on the wall.
In this newspaper darts game, you score points when a rolled newspaper lands in one of the target’s holes.
Since newspaper is light, it should be easy for older adults to handle.
Yo-yo fishing
Speaking of summer festivals, yo-yo fishing is one of the popular attractions, isn’t it? A tub filled with water and colorful, inflated water balloons—just the sight of it really livens up a summer fair, doesn’t it? Each balloon has a rubber loop, and you drop a hook aiming for that loop.
You can attach the hook to the end of a paper twist (koyori), but to make it easier to fish, you could also tie a hook to the end of cotton string and use something like chopsticks as a fishing rod.
The longer the string, the harder it gets, so keeping it short makes it easier and is recommended.
Whac-A-Mole
Whack-a-mole has long been a classic at game arcades.
It’s a game that even little kids can enjoy—and of course adults can have fun with it together, too.
Let’s spice up your summer festival with a homemade whack-a-mole! All you need are paper cups, wooden chopsticks, and tape.
Make a hammer by firmly taping a chopstick to a paper cup.
Draw mole illustrations on other paper cups.
At the start signal, use your hammer to cover and tap the cups with mole drawings.
Remove any “caught” mole cups and place them in your area, and compete to see how many you can collect within the time limit.
lottery game with many strings (Senbonbiki)
Are you familiar with something called “senbonbiki”? In senbonbiki, a large transparent box or other visible container is filled with many prizes—candies, plush toys, and other trinkets—and each prize has its own string attached.
The strings extend outside the box, and you draw just one string, like a lottery.
While preparing a large setup can be difficult, how about making a senbonbiki using cardboard or an empty box? Let the strings come out through the cardboard so people can pull them.
Attach reasonably sized snacks or small everyday items to the strings.
ring toss
Ring toss is a classic recreation that kids love and even adults will get excited about when they try it again after a while.
Many people have probably played it at summer festivals.
Let’s enjoy a handmade version of ring toss.
Use plastic bottles as the targets, and set point values based on the size of the bottles and the distance from the throwing line.
Decide how many rings each person gets—say, five—and take turns throwing, competing by the total points scored from successful tosses.
You can make it a team competition and battle by total team points, or play individually or in a tournament format to ramp up the excitement!