HANGING OF THE GREENS
Hanging of the Greens is an English tradition of decorating the home with wreaths, garlands, a Christmas tree, and evergreens for Advent and Christmas. You can use this same tradition in your facility with your residents. This can bring back some wonderful memories for some and introduce a new tradition to others. This is also a great way to get the entire facility to participate in decorating for the holiday season.
Learn & Listen – Discuss the tradition in hanging the greens with the residents.
Tradition of:
• Advent Wreath – The evergreen represents everlasting life found in Christ, the circle symbolizes life without end. The three purple candles in the wreath represent royalty (HOPE), humility (PEACE) and penitence (JOY). The rose-colored candle represents happiness (LOVE). The tall white candle in the center symbolizes God’s special light that has come to a dark world.
• Candles (you can use the battery operated kind) - Before the celebration of Christmas, candles were used to signify Christ as the light of the world.
• Bells – Are used to ring in the glad news of the birth of Jesus.
• Carolers – Sing out the coming of the Savior just like the angel choir sang to the shepherds and the message has been carried on ever since that first Holy night.
• Gift Giving – The Wise Men wanted to share their love and desire to know the King of Kings so they traveled many miles, risked their life by disobeying King Herod and they presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We continue the gift giving through giving tithes and gifts to family and friends.
• Candy Cane – The first candy cane was created to honor Jesus. The candy maker wanted to honor our Lord so he made a candy in the shape of a shepherd’s staff, when turned upside down it is the letter J for Jesus. The red and white stripes represent the blood of Jesus, which washed away our sins and makes us pure and white as snow. One bold stripe represents God who is the Father of us all. He three fine stripes represent the Trinity: one God, who revealed Himself to us in three ways: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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• The Christmas tree symbolizes peace and eternal life.
• Poinsettias – The star of the leaf represents the star of Bethlehem, the red flower stands for the bloodshed by Jesus who came to be our Savior.
• Evergreen wreath is an emblem of eternal life and God’s faithfulness to all humanity.
There are various traditions of the Hanging of the Greens and you can Google to learn more about this tradition if you want a deeper understanding of the formal service. Your residents will enlighten you as well from their own personal experience in church. Consider setting up a separate time and place where the residents and staff can come help place the decoration (use the list above as a guide to schedule to hang each decoration). After each decoration is put in place sing a spiritual Christmas Carol or Hymn, this is the Carolers part of the ceremony and will get everyone excited about the holiday season. You can also serve refreshments to encourage fellowship throughout the day. This alone will be a full day activity and it will decorate the facility to start the holiday celebration.
WRAP IT UP
Learn & Listen – What do you think of when you hear someone say “Wrap it up!”? Discuss with the residents all the ways they can “Wrap it up”, such as wrap a gift, to bring to an end, or to finalize a sale. Ask residents to talk about the time they have used the phrase “Wrap it up” and why.
Game – Have a gift wrapping contest. See which resident can wrap a box the fastest and still look presentable.
Food – Make snack wraps! You can use wheat or flour wraps and let the residents fill them with chicken salad, peanut butter and jelly or lots of veggies. Chill the wraps and serve them during a “Wrap it up” social.
Craft – If you have residents that sew then make a shoulder wrap. If they don’t sew then make a lap blanket by using fleece fabric, cutting three to five inch strips and knot each on. This will give them something warm to wrap around their legs while watching TV. Instructions on how to make a no-sew fleece blanket are available online.
Game – I have a couple of suggestions for this game so you can choose which one you think your residents will like the play. How you play it will be up to you.
• Start a short story and ask each resident to “wrap it up” with their own ending.
• See how many words the residents can rhyme with the word “wrap”.
Social – Serve the wraps that were made during the food activity to all the residents, along with tea, coffee or another refreshing beverage. This will “Wrap it up!” for your activity today.
WINTER WONDERLAND
Learn & Listen – What do you think of when you think of winter wonderland? Listen to your residents to see how creative they can get on what they think a winter wonderland is like. Discuss songs, movies or books relating to the theme.
Game – Name all things relating to a winter wonderland. Example: penguins, snowmen, icicles, snowballs, snowflakes. See how many the residents can get.
Food – Make Snowball cakes. Cupcake iced with white icing and covered in coconut are easy snowballs to make. You can also use the Mexican Wedding cookie recipe as a snowball, except leave out the nuts. Or build snowmen with marshmallows and cut small pieces of black string liquorish to use for the eyes, and mouth. Red string liquorish to use for the nose, a thin slice of any flavor roll up candy to use as a scarf and a chocolate kisses as a hat. Pretzels for the arms and afterwards the residents can eat it since it is all ate able. Make enough to serve at the Winter Wonderland social.
Exercise – Practice having a snowball fight to stretch the arms and move their legs. Purchase the small Nerf balls for them to throw at each other just like in a snowball fight.
Craft – Get creative by cutting out snowflakes with white paper and scissors. You can even have them make a paper snowflake chain to hang in their windows.
Game – Cut out white snowflakes two at a time so two will be exactly alike. Cut them out of paper, poster board or felt. Make at least ten sets of snowflakes making sure they the sets are slightly different from the others. Now on the back side of the sets make sure to mark which two are alike. Mix up the snowflakes with the secret mark on the down side. Ask residents to pick out the two snowflakes that are exactly alike.
Social – Invite all residents and staff to celebrate a Winter Wonderland. Serve Hot Cocoa, hot tea, decaf-coffee or apple cider, Snowball cakes or cookies, crackers with white cream cheese spread or white crackers with white cheese dip. Have someone sing or lead the group to sing Winter Wonderland, White Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, Let it Snow, etc.
NEW YEAR ACTIVITIES
Suggested that you do right after Christmas
Learn & Listen – Let this be the time you discuss with the residents the activities for the New Year. Call a residents and staff meeting to promote your activities and ask for suggestions for the New Year. Get input from both the residents and staff members and take notes so you can try to work in some of their ideas into your activities for the New Year. Make sure to have a list of the activities you did during the year as a reminder to them what you did do. You can also have a list of new ideas for them to look over and let you know if they would like to give the new ideas a try. Make this time a general theme idea and not a detail planner.
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Game – Pull a list of games you did during the year and a list of game suggestions you have never done before. Ask the residents to help you choose which games they would like to plan again and which games they would like to try. Let them pick out the games so if someone complains you can remind them that they picked out the games for the New Year. You could also make this into a game. List some of their favorite old games and list some new games on a round circle. Place a spinner in the middle and let each resident take a turn spinning. The game that it lands on will go on your list to add sometime during the year as a game activity. Once the game is written down then remove or mark it off the circle so it does not get landed on again. If the next resident spin lands on the blank they can either suggest a game or spin again.
Food – Find out what types of foods they would like to make or if they would like to learn how to decorate a cake, make edible centerpieces, or have food demonstrators come in to show new products. Set out cook books for the residents to look through and if they see a recipe they might like to try then write it down. You can also use the spinning circle to select a list of recipes to try out like you did for the game activity.
Exercise – Ask if they would like to learn any of the following instead of the usual exercise routines such as line dancing, yoga, balance ball, etc. Ask them to help pick out music to exercise to. There is nothing worse than hearing the same songs over and over again (unless you’re in the special care unity, which will not apply) during your exercise routine.
Would they like to try a DVD instruction video, where a resident can go in and start the DVD player to start the class? You can see who would like to take turns getting the class started and making sure the DVD player is turned off once the class is finished. All you need to do is go in and take names. This would give the responsibility over to residents that want to help and give you free time to take care of other responsibilities once you take their names and ensure the DVD got started okay.
 Craft – What about crafts? Is there something they would like to try making in craft class?
Movie – What type of movies interest them? Would they like the old classics or some of the new movies coming out?
Social – Now that you have got everyone’s input for the New Year activities, now let’s just party! Celebrate activities by playing music, dancing, eating snacks and top it all off with either a video slide show, or a power point presentation on a big screen of the highlights from activities this past year. Remind everyone of the fun, creativity, food, and fellowship they had in activities.
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SNOWBALL DAY
Game – Snowball Roll
See how many words your residents can roll out from the letters in the word “Snowball”. Example: now, wall, all, bowl, owl, low, loan, etc. To make it more challenging print other letters of the alphabet on index cards that are not in the words snowball. Make two cards for each letter. Let each resident draw a card that they can use with the letters in snowball to create another word. You can also divide them up in teams to earn points for each word they come up with and the winners get a special treat or certificate. You can also take two large square foam blocks to create letter dice. Add 12 letters (one on each side) to the blocks that are not in the word “snowball”. Let residents roll the two dice and the letters that are heads up can be used to roll out a new word. The word must be a real word and not one that is just made up or misspelled.
Game – Have a snowball fight with either rolled up tissue wrapping paper or to be safer use Nerf balls, white sponges or Marshmallows. Divide into teams and see how many snowballs they can get in target area. The target area can be across the other teams table, or a large bucket or whatever you want it to be so long as you can count the snowballs that made it into the area. The teams will try for the target area at the same time to make it more of a challenge. The team that successfully gets the most snowballs in the other team’s area wins.
Craft – Snow bags
Materials - white paper bags, wax paper, choice of white glitter, or white sparkle yarn, glue, silver or gold marker.
Instructions - Place a piece of wax paper inside the paper bag, this will prevent the marker or glue bleeding through on the other side. Lay the bag flat and on one side write the residents name in silver or gold marker. Turn the bag over and let residents use glue to make several snowflake designs. While glue is still wet let them add white glitter or white sparkle yarn. Let bag dry completely. These will be used in the Snowball Hunt game.
Game – Another game option is to make popcorn balls and wrap them in clear plastic wrap to hide around the facility. Tell the residents to find and collect the popcorn snowballs. Let the residents use their snowflake paper bag they made in craft class to collect the popcorn snowballs they find. The resident that collects the most popcorn snowballs gets a prize and the privilege to share some of their snowballs they found (if they want to) or have them turn all popcorn snowballs in so you can serve them during the movie time.
Social – Snowball Ball
Decorate with white tulle, fabric, tissue paper, cotton, white balloons or whatever you have that resembles snow. Add white Styrofoam balls and paper snowflakes. Light blue table cloths with white felt snowflakes and the centerpiece can be several snowballs with fake snow sprinkled around them. If you want an eatable centerpiece use Jumbo Marshmallows (I saw these at Wal-Mart) to make snowmen. Place three large marshmallows on a short skew stick, adding black gum drop as a hat, use icing to add mini chocolate chips as buttons, eyes, and month, cut Fruit Roll-ups as scarf and use black licorice string stuck in the side for arms. Have music, dance and serve either snowball bonbons or snowball cupcakes along with coffee or tea or make snowball punch.
Movie – “Snowball Express” and treat them to White Cheddar popcorn or popcorn balls to snack on during the movie with a refreshing drink.
CHRISTMAS AROUND THE WORLD
This theme can be stretched out for an entire week by breaking down the activities so you highlight a new country Christmas celebration each day.
Learn & Listen – Learn all about historical Christmas celebration online. Ask residents if they had a family tradition that came from another country which was passed down from descendants from a foreign country. Some may discuss just their family traditions, however they may find that tradition originated from another country.
Discussion – Santa Claus by another name is still the same. Look up the different names of Santa Claus. Examples include: Father Christmas (English), Kris Kringle (American), Papa Noel (Spanish), Sinterklass (Netherlands), Pere Noel (French), and Babbo Natale (Italy). There are many more!
Exercise – Have a good old snowball fight, except use marshmallows instead of snow. Let the resident throw, stretch, bend to pick up as many as they can and move side to side to dodge the marshmallow snowballs from the other residents. A snowball fight is a good way to get in some exercise and have fun at the same time.
Craft – Make a peppermint candy tree. What you will need:
• A medium green Styrofoam cone for each resident
• A large bag of wrapped peppermint candy
• Low temp glue gun
• Mini red bows
• A star or larger gold bow for the top of the tree
Use your low temp glue gun to glue one side of the peppermint candy wrapper onto the green Styrofoam cone. Start from the bottom gluing the candy around in layers until the cone is covered. Add the mini red bows in various places on the tree to make it look like ornaments and top it off with the gold star or bow. This is a craft they can keep or give. If they only glue on side of the wrapper to the tree then after Christmas they can pull them off and enjoy the candy.
Game –Let the residents help fill a pinata and invite the family/staff children in to let them take a swing at breaking the pinata. Keep residents a safe distance away, but close enough to cheer on instructions for the kids as they try to hit their target.
Movie/Social –Host a Christmas around the World social for residents and staff. Have finger foods from different places such as Swedish meatballs, Mexican Wedding cookies, English Toffee, etc. Play music from around the world and you could have different country flags set around on tables as well.
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CHRISTINE'S THEMES: 