Forum Discussion

My resident's love reading from the Guideposts books 'Listening to the Animals". There are 20 books total in the series and they are about animals helping people or famous animals or animals saving people. They are great short stories. We also like the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, although sometimes those can be pretty sad. I like to pre-read those stories prior to reading them to the residents. We also do an activity called Chapter a Day where we read a chapter or two from a novel. I always recap what we read last time and also remind everyone of the main characters, but they seem to enjoy that too. We read 'A Dog's Purpose' and 'A Dog's Journey' and then we watched the movie 'A Dogs' Purpose'. They loved both the book and the movie. Both were sort of sad, but excellent.

I think the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" stories are the best. They are short and uplifting. You can even find some online.

Here are some other ideas why not have higher functioning residents write a story that you then couldread to the group
For ideas you could get a large colorful picture and you could make statements about the picture and that the residents comment on what you are saying
You of course would have to write the story making additions as necessary
I am hoping to write an article as to how to do this in the future I would call it a picture is worth 1000 words
Another idea for writing a story is to take a song and write your story about it
The residents and I wrote a story from bicycle built for two
I am sure you are a creative soul
I always told the story about when I tried to learn how to ski
My attempt to ski was not successful but the story about but it was a great hit if you need further assistance please leave a comment
I hope this helps
Susan

Thank you both for the wonderful ideas.

The writer Gervaise Phinn writes full books but they are broken down into sections, hes really funny and my residents love taking it in turns or letting me read the book aloud. If you have any retired teachers they will love him, as he was one and has a lot of funny observations on children and wokring in schools.

I also use Chicken Soup for the Soul books. They have so many stories to choose from and you can get them to complement the different seasons. My residents love them!