This very simple game works great for memory care. It promotes socialization and stimulates memory. All you need is a deck of playing cards! 

Players take turns guessing what card the dealer will turn over. Ask players to guess if the card will be red or black. If a player is not able to vocalize, you can lay one red and one black card in front of them and prompt them by pointing to the color.

Turn the card over. If the player guesses correctly, they get a point. The player with the most points once you reach the end of the deck wins! You can play multiple times and keep score.

With this activity, residents sit in a circle while you play music in the background. As they pass the ball around the circle, stop the music at random times. The person who has the ball when the music stops has to change direction and pass the ball back to the person who gave it to them. This game is funny and it’s great for coordination too!

Involve your residents in painting your community green for St. Patrick’s Day! Hold a craft program to create shamrocks that you can hang around your community.

First, create a four-leaf clover cutout with cardboard to use as a template. Trace around the template on green construction paper and cut the clover out. You can either pre-cut the amount of clovers you need so your residents can get right to the decorating, or make multiple templates so they can cut out their own. You can also make both options available to cater to different levels of participation!  

Give your residents green embellishments like glitter, gems, buttons, small pom poms, foam cutouts, and feathers to glue onto their clovers. Use a hole punch to make a single hole at the top of the finished clovers so you can hang them up and make decorative bunting.

March is International Women's Month, and it’s the perfect time to honour and recognize the amazing stories your women residents have to tell.

Start by highlighting stories of the women who live in your community by interviewing each one (who consents) and posting their answers to questions throughout your community newsletter, bulletin boards, table centerpieces, and more.

Here are a few questions you can ask during your interviews that could help you dive into their lives even more than a “typical” social history assessment:

• Tell me about a time when it wasn’t easy to be a woman.
• Did you ever have to stand up to a man when it wasn’t necessarily socially acceptable?
• Have you ever marched in a protest?
• Tell me about your education.
• What’s the best part about being a woman?
• What’s been the hardest part about being a woman for you?
• What advice do you have for young women today?
• Who were women you looked up to when you were young?
• Was it hard to find female role models?
• What makes a woman strong?
  

You can also highlight women throughout March by talking about one influential woman every day before exercise class or before lunch. Here’s to women!

Serve up a pancake bar to your residents this National Pancake Day on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023! Not only are pancakes easy to make, but they can be savoury or sweet and be topped with anything and everything! For those who acknowledge Shrove Tuesday, you can talk about this day, what they did as children, etc.

Recipe Ingredients (approx 7 pancakes):

• 1 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Beat all ingredients until well mixed. Heat a lightly greased frying pan/skillet and then remove from heat. Spoon 2 tbsp of the batter and lift and tilt the pan to spread evenly. Return to heat, brown on one side, then on the other. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve with jam, maple syrup, sugar, chocolate, fruit, and more — the possibilities are endless!

If you have residents who are big football fans and are excited for Superbowl Sunday, why not throw a celebration party? Get your food in order, and lots of it. Good company is what makes a party, but good food is what attracts good company. There are tons of football-themed snacks you can make for the occasion, including snack stadiums and football Rice Krispie treats. Organize a couple games like a football pool, paper football, or cornhole. To decorate, make football paper chains and get balloons of the teams’ colours. Then, get that enthusiasm to cheer on the teams!

Give your residents a chance to get creative and write a story together. Give a pen and paper to a resident for a set time period (2-3 minutes), and then pass it on to the next person to continue the story. You could give a theme (like mystery or romance) or just let their imaginations run wild and see what happens.

Turn on your local hockey game or NHL game and get your sports-loving residents together for a tailgate party. You can serve those typical sports snacks, such as nachos and cheese, chicken wings, chips, and popcorn for them to snack on during the game. You could also serve beer or ginger-ale. If you have residents who used to play hockey, set up a hockey net for them to show off their puck-hitting skills.

Get those binoculars out and gather together near a big window in your community. There are over 900 bird species in North America, and the types of birds your residents can see in the winter will be different from the ones in the spring or summer. This is an activity that could also be done as a 1:1 activity with a resident or self-directed.

Host a friendly competition to see who can build the best snowman using fake snow. To make fake snow, mix together an 8:1 ratio of flour to oil, which will create moldable “snow” for residents to build their snowmen. Get some snowman supplies, such as buttons, ribbons, construction paper, glue and let your residents’ creative juices flow!