The onset of dementia can come quickly and be incredibly scary for a senior client and their families. Luckily, frequent exercise of the brain helps keep the mind sharp and prevent onset of dementia, or at least lengthen the time before onset. The Wordbrain app provides caregivers with a game for their senior clients to exercise their minds on a regular basis.
The premix of the Wordbrain app is for users to find scrambled letters on a game board to create a word below. For example, if a board has the letters S, O, P and T on a board, users need to swipe across the letters in the correct order to spell a word. However, these four letters spell out several words, such as STOP, TOPS, POTS and SPOT.
Users must swipe through the various combinations until they find the specific word the app is looking for. At first this may seem frustrating because the first word you swipe may not register as the answer. But this truly forces senior clients to work through all the possibilities and keeps their brains engaged as they move the letters around to find various combinations instead of simply the first one that pops into their head.
If users get stuck, there's an option to ask for a hint which will help by displaying the first letter of the word in the box below. Users also have the option to hit the button with two arrows in a circle below, which will shuffle the letters in the boxes above to give a new order and help visualize them in a different way.
As users play, their "Brain Size" within the app grows and accordingly the puzzles get more difficult. The app offers different levels names after types of insects. Users begin in the Ant level and work their way up to unlock the Spider level. Users also have the ability to use their own creativity and create a puzzle to stump their family and friends.
Senior caregivers and their clients could play on this app together and create puzzles for one another to try and beat. Once a user creates a puzzle, they are given a unique code that corresponds with it. When they share that code, all their senior caregiver needs to do is type it in the designated area on the home screen and they're given the puzzle their senior client created for them to solve.
The Wordbrain app is available for Apple and Android platforms.
Senior caregivers, let us know your feedback on this app and keep us posted if you discover additional apps that assist with caregiving duties and help relieve caregiver stress. You may also refer-a-friend to a senior caregiving job and win prizes weekly and monthly on Caregiverlist.
-Paige Krzysko