Linda

I did a whole program about Australian Language. I found some interesting literature about the origins of our Aussie language. I went through that with our residents, and then went on to the slang sayings, I used Golden Carers list to start the program to get them thinking about the topic, then went on to the history side, and concluded with more downloaded lists of Aussie sayings. They loved it, and knew most of the meanings. One of our residents commented how good it was to remember those and that today's young generation don't have this type of language, instead they have acronyms eg: LOL, PSML,YOLO etc.

We did a similar activity, we used 'barbie' horses that I gathered from going to garage sales and car boot sales. All the horses were different colours, and we used string to pull them in from the start line:) The residents loved the game and were very competitive.

We also play this game, and to make it more interesting, we put the word on a piece of paper in the staff lunch room for the staff to try and outdo the residents with the number of words! makes for very interesting lunches! :)

A new activity has been posted by a Golden Carers member: DIY Cardholders

we do a 'life board' with permission of family and resident. it has photos and brief history, pictures from magazines etc. for residents who don't want the life history board, we do a three point statements on their wall that serve as a conversation point for staff. these have a bright coloured triangle (instead of a dot) and then a brief statement eg: I was in the Navy, I have three children, I love dogs. During accreditation, the auditor's were very impressed with this :)

great ideas :) We are having a snowman building competition... we will have three rubbish bin liners (white) filled to various levels with shredded paper and tied up, we have buttons for the front, craft eyes and cardboard nose to stick on, along with a hat and a scarf. It will be a race for our residents to build a snowman and stick it together using only sticky tape!

that will definitely be included this Christmas:) we did a similar game for a wedding shower - it was hilarious, with the MC (me) unable to continue reading, as i was laughing so much at the chaos that the table was in trying to figure out left and right!