April Fool's Day is all about having some good laughs. So why not schedule a laughter yoga program on the 1st of April?
Laughter has significant benefits to one's overall wellbeing and mood and scheduling some time for it on your calendar may be just what your residents need. How do you laugh when nothing’s funny? Just open your mouth into a wide smile and force the breath out. It may feel silly at first, but when you’re in a group of people committed to laughing, the make-believe version often transforms into the real thing.
Here are some exercises to try:
Lion laughter
Thrust out the tongue, widen the eyes, and stretch the hands out like claws while laughing.
Humming laughter
Laugh with the mouth closed and hum.
Silent laughter
Open your mouth wide and laugh without making a sound. Look into other people’s eyes and make funny gestures.
Gradient laughter
Start by smiling and then slowly begin to laugh with a gentle chuckle. Increase the intensity of the laugh until you’ve achieved a hearty laugh. Then gradually bring the laugh down to a smile again.
Heart-to-heart laughter
Move close to a person and hold each other’s hands and laugh.
This is a fun activity to plan with a group of your residents in advance.
Get them together, pull out a white board and get brainstorming on they can prank the larger resident group at your community.
An example would be playing a funny trick in the dining room at dinner. The group could all eat their dessert first, stand up and start singing a song at a specific time or act out a dramatic scene.
It will leave your staff and other residents who aren't in on the prank confused, until the group shout's out, "April Fool's!"
A fun way to celebrate April Fool's Day is to encourage certain residents at your community to choose and wear an outfit you would never be caught dead in or that is very out of place for April: mismatched clothing, lots of different patterns together, a bathing suit and sun hat.
The best part will be the looks that you get from your residents and behaving like there isn't anything out of the ordinary!
April 1st is a great day to book a comedian to come to your community to do a comedy show. Or better yet, plan a stand-up comedy show and have your residents share their comedic talents and funny jokes with others.
You can help your more introverted residents by sharing some comedy material to use.
Set up your lounge or dining room with a stage and a mic and create a fun title for your show! There will be some great bellow laughs with this activity.
Host a special Easter Tea party for your residents and their loved ones.
You can encourage residents to help prepare by scheduling programs to make decorations and centrepieces, as well as encourage them to help set up and get everything ready.
You could even do some Easter baking together for a take home gift doing chocolate rice cakes or hot cross buns.
Easter wouldn't be Easter without decorating a few eggs.
This is a great low cost activity for all your residents to get involved in. All you need are some hard boiled eggs and art supplies, like markers, paint and stickers.
You could make this a fun competition by having a contest for best decorated egg. You could also use you resident's eggs as centerpieces for your Easter dinner.
A great way to get creative over the Easter holiday is to decorate Easter bonnets using Easter themed craft supplies.
Use chicks, eggs, paper and daffodils to decorate large straw hats for your residents to wear to Easter meals or parties.
Supplies Needed:
If your community is allowing visitors and this idea can be done safely, consider hosting an egg hunt for children and grandchildren from residents' families. Intergenerational programming provides much joy and benefits to older adults and they can participate in a variety of ways: "
- They can decorate the eggs
- They can help hide the eggs
- They can make and/or decorate baskets for the kids to use
- They can make Easter bonnets to wear at the egg hunt
Or, they can simply show up and watch the delight of children laughing and having fun as they search for all the eggs.
Baskets galore! Bring on all the baskets and have your residents do a traditional Easter Egg Hunt, either indoors or outdoors.
You can keep it traditional and place little chocolate eggs around your community or shake things up by putting larger plastic eggs filled with special items or prizes.
For your residents who have more limited mobility, you can set up a virtual egg hunt, where they can try to locate eggs hidden in a picture on a large screen. Check out YouTube for some ideas.
Along with those great green outfits, there's lots of opportunities to celebrate St. Patty's day using food and drinks.
It's a great occasion to serve green beer, Guinness or a non-alcoholic drink that you add green food colouring to.
Work with your culinary team to come up with the menu of Irish foods: Soda bread, Irish Stew, Corned Beef and Cabbage, Shephard's Pie, Sausage and Potatoes, White Pudding.
Why not add some decorations and put some Irish music on in the background to really set the mood.
