37 activities for someone with dementia

NICE, the body that sets clinical guidance for the NHS, names exercise, art, gardening, baking, reminiscence and music among the everyday activities that a person's dementia care and support plan should include. Behind all of them sits the same short list of reasons. A good activity should help your relative feel useful, give them a way to express a feeling, connect them to another person, or let them reach back to an old memory. Most of the ideas below do at least one of these.

What matters more than the activity itself is the fit. Choose for what your relative can still do this month rather than what they enjoyed years ago: a keen gardener who can no longer stand for long can still pot a plant sitting down. Keep a first attempt to twenty or thirty minutes rather than a whole afternoon, and if your relative is harder to settle later in the day, read what is sundowning and save anything demanding for the morning instead. If the first few things you try do not land, that says more about the moment than the activity. Put it away and try again another day, or with somebody else in the room.

If your relative needs more support than these ideas suggest, the seven stages of dementia sets out how much help each stage tends to need. Some of the quieter activities on this page, listening to music, being read to, holding a hand, still reach someone in the later stages even once conversation no longer does.

A carer arranged through PrimeCarers can build several of these into a visit rather than you having to plan every one yourself. What carers do on a companionship visit has more on what that looks like day to day.

Exercise for older people has more on building activity into a week safely, and if getting your relative outside at all has become the hard part, a companionship carer can take that walk with them on the days you cannot.

If the records themselves are long gone, a Spotify playlist built from their favourite songs works just as well, and linking it to a smart speaker such as an Alexa means your relative can play it themselves with a spoken request rather than needing help each time. Using Alexa to make everyone's life easier has more on setting one up.

Music has the firmer evidence of the two. A Cochrane review of music-based sessions for people with dementia in care homes found that five or more sessions probably reduce depressive symptoms and behavioural problems, and may improve wellbeing and reduce anxiety, though it made little difference to agitation or to thinking itself. The Alzheimer's Society runs Singing for the Brain groups around the country for exactly this reason, and dementia cafes often build music or art into their sessions too.

Art therapy is recommended almost everywhere you look, but a 2018 Cochrane review of the research found only two trials good enough to include, and neither showed a clear change in memory or mood compared with another group activity. That does not mean painting or colouring is not worth doing. It means the case for it rests on your relative enjoying it and the time spent together, rather than on a proven effect, which is a perfectly good reason on its own.

Research on reminiscing backs this up in part. A Cochrane review found the clearest benefit was in care home studies using one-to-one reminiscing, with improvements in quality of life, cognition and communication; group reminiscing in the community showed a smaller, more specific benefit for communication. Time with animals has a similarly mixed but promising picture: a systematic review found improvements in mood, agitation and quality of life, though the studies are still small and varied enough that the case is not settled. Horses have been shown to ease symptoms of Alzheimer's looks at one specific and well-studied example of this. Age UK's dementia support services is a good place to find organised reminiscence and social groups near you if you would rather not run every session yourself.

Cognitive Stimulation Therapy, usually shortened to CST, is a set of group sessions built around themed discussion, word games and gentle mental exercise, and it is the one activity on this page that NICE has formally recommended since 2006 for people with mild to moderate dementia. It works partly because it is structured and repeated over weeks with the same group, which a game of dominoes at home cannot easily reproduce. Ask the GP or memory service whether a local CST group is running, or look through Age UK's dementia support services for one nearby.

At home, the ordinary versions are still worth doing for the company and the sense of achievement, even without a formal programme behind them: a jigsaw done together, a game of dominoes, snakes and ladders, or crosswords and sudoku at whatever level still feels achievable rather than frustrating. Jobs around the house work the same way. Pairing socks from the washing, polishing something, or helping bake a cake all give your relative a small, finishable task and a reason to feel useful, which is worth as much as any game.