Rainy Day Activities for Older Adults

What can an older adult do on a rainy day?

Build the afternoon from small, finishable pleasures: the six daily puzzles with a pot of tea, letter-writing with the wireless on, ten-minute bouts of album-sorting broken up by a word search, and something simple in the oven while the sudoku waits for the timer.

• The full puzzle round: all six daily puzzles back to back with a pot of tea — a genuinely satisfying hour
• Letter-writing with the wireless on, finished with the mini crossword as a reward
• A photograph album sort-out — ten minutes of sorting, then a word search, then ten more minutes
• Baking something simple while the sudoku waits for the oven timer
• The armchair quiz: today's trivia questions read aloud to whoever is in the house, cat included

Why do puzzles suit a rainy day so well?

A rainy day pastime needs to be absorbing enough to hold the attention, gentle enough to be restful, and finishable before restlessness sets in. That is a description of a daily puzzle. Five small puzzles beat one enormous one on days like these — each gives its own little completion, and you can stop between any two of them feeling finished rather than defeated.

How can two people pass a rainy day together?

Rain shared is rain halved. Do the word search as a race, the trivia as a quiz show, and the memory match as a tournament. For the competitive: our trivia gives a score out of five, and a running weekly tally between two people has rescued many a wet Wednesday.