March 17th is the perfect day to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and show off your green spirit!
Encourage all of your residents to dress up and wear as much green as they can. Clothes, accessories, shoes, glasses. The world is their oyster. If there's room in the budget, maybe head to your local dollar store to pick up some celebratory green beads or fun St. Patty's day hats.
For those risk-takers in your community, you could even offer to dye their hair or facial hair green (temporary, of course).
Encourage all your staff to get involved and let you culinary team know to use green tablecloths, napkins and centrepieces.
Are your residents feeling lucky?
Organize a 4-Leaf Clover scavenger hunt!
Use fake shamrocks or leprechaun gold coins (perhaps that were pre-made in an arts and crafts program) and scatter them around the common areas of your community. Maybe there are prizes, hopefully there will be luck, but there will always be fun with this program!
Somewhere over the rainbow, there's an opportunity to play good ol' coin toss!
Use construction paper of the different colours of the rainbow and create colourful cups or tubes with them. Each colour earns different points! Have your residents toss their coin in and see if they have the luck of the Irish.
Looking for a fun St. Patty's Day to kick off the morning? Why not start at breakfast with St. Patrick's Day Minute to Win It!
Serve your residents a bowl of Lucky Charms and give each of them a spoon. See who can use them to pick out the most marshmallow pieces from Lucky Charms cereal and put them into another bowl.
To add an extra layer of challenge, assign different amounts of points to different marshmallow shapes!
You can't resist those Lucky Charms!
Step right up, step right up! Encourage your staff and residents to enter the "Best-Dressed Leprechaun Challenge" on St. Patrick's Day. They can find a lucky green outfit using hats, ties, jackets and stockings to complete the look. If someone has a pipe to pop in their mouth, that's the cherry on top.
The options are endless when it comes to creating St. Patty's Day Themed Games for your residents.
Irish Carpet Bowling using turnips and potatoes? Why not!
Playing a "fortunate" variation of Bingo? Sure!
A St. Patrick's Day version of Pictionary? Yes!
A Golden Coin Toss? The more the merrier!
You can create all the supplies you need with an Irish theme using images and words such as Leprechaun, Pot of Gold, Rainbow and more!
Create a Dining Room Club to have residents assist with folding napkins. Consider giving a napkin-folding class to teach residents how to make different napkin animals
Make a laughing basket! Sounds funny already, right?
This simple, quick activity has a ton of health benefits, and is possible for everyone to participate in. Laughing causes mental and physical changes to your body, including reducing tension, increasing motivation, improving memory, and enhancing one’s immune system. Who isn’t going to want to laugh?
And, it’s easy to do. Look up jokes online, and ask your residents to contribute their favorite jokes, or even funny stories they want to share. Then, every week you can share a new joke with everyone!
This laughing basket can also morph into lots of things, depending on your residents interests. Ask them for some of their wisdom, lessons they’ve learned, or even interesting facts.
This is a great activity for residents in Memory Care who are in the later stages of their dementia.
Blow up a colorful, helium balloon and tie it to your resident's chair or wheelchair so that the balloon is at arm's height. Start hitting the balloon to get your resident to start hitting the balloon as well.
This provides great exercise for your resident's arms.
Have any of your residents or any of their family members ever written a book – perhaps a cookbook? If so, then host a fun event where the resident or family member reads an excerpt of their book to your residents. If, however, you don't have any authors in your facility, then contact your local library to see if they know of any local authors who would be willing to stop by to speak to your residents about their book.
