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 have been in your shoes. I think someone already touched on this but I take the "we go around the table clockwise so each person can answer" approach. I used to play the 'make small words out of a big word' and I had "Al" who walked into a room and just blurted out all the words. They were to write down all the words they could think of for 10 minutes. I actually ended up asking him to assist another resident that usually struggled with this game. It gave him "purpose".
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