I work as a recreational therapist in the senior behavioral health unit at a local hospital. One of my activities is to handout worksheets with random, unrelated words and ask the residents/patients to string the words together to create a short story . I give 16 words, nouns and verbs and ask they use 8 of them. This program assists the medical team to evaluate how the brain is processing the new information.
What is your position? A.L. or SNF? What do you mean by writing plans...the monthly calendar? What is your 'form'? If you're a director of recreation you only need a calendar w/ generic terms- 2:00 bowling; 3:00 painting class
I am a new director and am trying to brainstorm some innovative ideas. As a TRD I just focused on my activities but am looking for some new "bigger" ideas that involve all and don't require big groups. Any ideas out there for Nurses week May 6-May 12 and Skilled Nursing Care Week May 9-May 15???
I think the challenge here is to do no contact activities with COVID restrictions. If you play cards or dice games you need to wipe down everything as soon as someone touches them and definitely cannot pass around to other residents! Music therapy is huge in our memory care unit, use an ipad that only you touch, find pandora or amazon music and search 40's or 50's music, play part of the song and let them try to guess what song it is. This or that? game. Dry erase board for words-in-words game, Pictionary, hangman. Use laptop for youtube clips of funny animals. Reminisce 1:1 about favorite holiday, best pet ever, etc. Finish the phrase- on golden carers website A-Z like scattergories: name something that starts with B that you find at the beach; starts with the letter C that you find in the garden, etc. There are a lot of things on Goldencarers- Alzheimer's category, Activity Connection website, and on Pinterest.
Snowman is my theme for January. You can buy Styrofoam balls at Michaels, I put them in a cylinder vase w/ snow on bottom, they sell buy the bag at michaels.
I would like to congratulate Golden Carers for being an invaluable tool in enabling me to provide my Dementia clients with a wide range of appropriate activities.
Great value for money, I would recommend you to anyone working in this field. A big thank you!!!
Carole Godde Recreational Activities Officer Australia
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