Four things you can do with someone living with dementia, right now, on this page. They need no preparation, no equipment and no printing. Every one of them is built so that nobody can get anything wrong.
If you are looking after someone, the hardest part of an afternoon is often not the practical care — it is finding something to do together that feels like company rather than supervision. That is what these are for.
This is not a test. There is no score, no timer and no wrong answer anywhere on this page. It is a set of things to do together, for the pleasure of doing them.
Choose an activity
How to use them
Sit beside the person, not opposite them. Side by side is less like being interviewed. One screen between two people works better than one each.
Read the prompt out loud and then stop talking. Silence is not failure; it is thinking. Give it longer than feels comfortable.
Follow the answer wherever it goes. If a question about school turns into a story about a dog, the dog is the point. You are not collecting correct answers, you are having a conversation.
Stop while it is still going well. Ten good minutes is a success. There is no target and nothing to finish.
If a question lands badly, move on immediately. Press the button for another one. Some memories are painful, and no prompt is worth pushing through distress for.
Why there is no score
Every activity here can be done without producing a wrong answer. That is a deliberate design choice, and it is the reason this page looks different from most “brain games”.
A scored game invites the person to measure themselves, and the measurement is the part that hurts. It also invites the site to imply something it has no business implying — that playing will slow the condition down. Nothing on this page will do that, and nothing on this page claims to.
If what you actually want is to think through changes in memory or thinking, that is a different job and it has its own tool: the cognitive self-check. If you are trying to work out where things stand, use the dementia stage navigator. And if you are the one doing the caring, the caregiver burnout check is for you rather than for them.
Where these ideas come from
Conversation starters draw on reminiscence — talking about the past using prompts. A Cochrane review of reminiscence therapy for dementia found the effects inconsistent and often small, varying considerably by setting and format, with some positive effects on quality of life, cognition, communication and mood, and probable benefits for cognition and mood when done one to one. Woods B, et al. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2018 (PMID 29493789).
Choosing the activity to suit the person is why there are four of these rather than one. A Cochrane review of personally tailored activities for people with dementia living in the community found they may reduce challenging behaviour and may slightly improve quality of life, while explicitly cautioning that the certainty of the evidence is low, and finding no clear benefit for depression or for carer burden. Möhler R, et al. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2020 (PMID 32786083).
Removing the wrong answer follows the principle behind errorless learning, where a task is arranged so mistakes are unlikely. It is worth being straight about the evidence here: a randomised trial of relearning daily activities found that structured relearning helped and the gains lasted six months, but that the errorless version had no additional effect over ordinary trial-and-error learning. Voigt-Radloff S, de Werd MM, et al. Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, 2017 (PMID 28335810). These activities avoid wrong answers for comfort and dignity, then — not because doing so is proven to improve anything.
None of this is medical advice, and none of it replaces care from a qualified clinician. See our editorial policy for how we source and correct what we publish.
More to try
For written activity ideas away from a screen, browse activities and games, or start with the activities and engagement guide. For help with the rest of the day, see caregiver daily support.