The winter season brings its own mix of fun. Snow falls and warm beverages come out more often! While residents may not be able to (or even want to!) go outside and play in the snow, you can still make an activity of the snow!
Host a fun competition to see who can build the best miniature snowman using fake snow. Simply mix together an 8:1 ratio of flour to oil (8 cups of flour to 1 cup of oil) to create moldable “snow” for residents to build their snowmen. Supply buttons and ribbons for residents to embellish their snowmen. A final touch is taking a picture of each snowmen and have all residents vote on the best contenders!
An alternative to the fake snow mi above is to use air dry clay by Crayola as an easy solution!
Click here to see the original idea.
Wintertime is as good as any to cook yummy home-cooked meals! Family and friends of your resident are all looking for new and delicious recipes to try. This is an opportunity for a one-on-one activity idea!
Have your resident make a list of 5 to 10 of their favourite recipes! Each recipe should be titled, detail the ingredients and quantities needed and have instructions to follow for a perfect cooking experience. The final touch to creating this recipe list is to help your resident type the list into the computer and add to the recipes. Finally, the booklet can either be printed out and sent as a gift from your resident, or be sent electronically like an attachment by email!
The best part is collecting feedback from the recipient to share with your resident! It is the perfect way to spread the joys of cooking.
Many of your residents may be affected by swollen legs and ankles, a condition called edema. It is common in older adults, and can make moving around more difficult, make the lower body feel uncomfortable and heavy, and increase the risk of falling. Edema causes excess fluids to be pulled down by gravity into the legs, ankles and feet, building up in the lower body. It can result from a variety of health conditions too.
Thankfully, daily caring has put together three light exercises residents can do to reduce the swelling in their legs and ankles by getting the excess fluid flowing again!
Exercise 1: Ankle pumps
Exercise 2: Glute Squeezes
Exercise 3: Single Knee to Chest
SAFETY FIRST! As with any exercises, it is essential to check in with your resident's doctor about performing them. Displacing fluid in the body might put extra stress on your resident's body that the doctor would be aware of. It is always best to err on the side of caution!
Hopefully, your resident feels much better after performing these exercises
Check out the original idea as well as a video here.
We can’t all get to the gallery, especially not during Covid.
With special features for people living with dementia, Armchair Gallery is an app that brings world-class art & culture to users. Armchair Gallery includes instructions for tried-and-tested creative activities to explore with people with dementia. You can discover, play & create with arts of work from famous artists.
Artworks and artefacts from the collections of Chatsworth House, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The Lowry, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Pitt Rivers Museum, Mr Straw’s House & Newstead Abbey are available.
May need supervision to help set this up and enjoy with patient/resident.
Sourced from the Health Innovation Network's Activities on Tablets collection
Online colouring works well on tablets and touchscreen devices, where it’s easy to tap and fill the white spaces. This is particularly true for people in the later stages of dementia, when using a pen, pencil or computer mouse may no longer be possible.
The Color website offers a wonderful choice of colourings, from animals and flowers to vehicles, circus and trains.
Or try a collection of free colouring pages & images from libraries, archives and cultural institutions from around the world on Open Culture.
Sourced from the Health Innovation Network's Activities on Tablets collection
https://themissingpiecepuzzle.com/blogs/lets-talk-about-puzzles/dementia-and-jigsaw-puzzlesJigidi is a website containing a variety of online jigsaw puzzles of different sizes depending on ability. If you join Jigidi you can save your progress, create your own puzzles and much more. It's free and no personal info is required.
Jigsaw puzzles are ideal for patients with Dementia and Alzheimers. While puzzles are therapeutic, they also provide exercise in memory and are said to improve brain functions, especially short-term memory says Donna Brown.
This activity is best done alone or with a carer.
Sourced from the Health Innovation Network's Activities on Tablets collection
My Reef 3D is a great app for people with advanced dementia. The app lets users interact with around 14 different types of virtual fish. Their colours and movements are soothing and simulating. Activities within the app include stocking the aquarium with fish and interacting with the tank. Users can also just sit back and enjoy the show, looking at all the fish swim together, or even follow a particular fish throughout the aquarium as he swims.
Sourced from the Health Innovation Network's Activities on Tablets collection
The BBC Reminiscence Archive is the BBC's contribution to the growing popularity of reminiscence therapy for residents in memory care.
Eldercare Alliance defines Reminiscence therapy as a treatment that uses all the senses — sight, touch, taste, smell and sound — to help individuals with dementia remember events, people and places from their past lives. The benefits observed of this type of therapy is that is reduces boredom and symptoms of depression in residents, makes them more confident in their abilities, allows residents to engage in conversations about their oldest memories, the ones they remember the most. Its low prompting approach as well, reducing the stress and friction in reaping the benefits of the therapy.
The BBC draws on the enormous amount of photos, videos, and sound clips in its archives to deliver and easy to use interactive reminiscence application. To begin, simply select a theme or a decade and choose the media type you'd like to see. You can pick Image, Audio or Video content. The results are randomized each visit; however, items can be ‘favourited’ to return to later.
You can access BBC Reminiscence Archive here.
Sourced from the Health Innovation Network's Activities on Tablets collection
Virtually everyone who has owned a pet has felt the sadness of having to leave your beloved friend at home when leaving for work. Next time, think of bringing your pet to work as they can serve as a fantastic therapy for your residents who might be feeling lonely these days.
Dogs and cats who are social are filled with love for anyone they meet. If your animal is up to it, try taking him or her on short visits with your residents! Residents can play and pet the animal, give them affection and receive gratification in return. This is also a great opportunity to bond and socialize with your residents one-on-one!
Here is an article that talks about the benefits of pet therapy for residents with dementia specifically.
Everyone is familiar with the childhood game of telephone. It works traditionally by having a string or circle of people. One of the individuals thinks of a word or phrase and whispers it in the ear of the next, and so on until the last person hears the whisper. Then the last person announces what he heard, and this is compared with what the first individual spoke. The differences are oftentimes shocking!
This game can easily be adapted to work with residents at in their doorframe, so as to see all other residents from a safe distance. If residents can whisper loudly enough for only their neighbour to hear, the telephone phrase can be transmitted physically. If not, a resident can always call their next-door neighbour to whisper the secret phrase. Once every resident has received the secret phrase, the first and last people can compare what they heard.
An extra fun twist you can put on this game is asking every resident to remember what they heard and transmitted to the next person so as to see the transformation of the message as it was communicated!
