PATIO PARTY
This activity can be a great fundraiser if you take the time to plan it with your residents. Let the residents be involved, most of them did fundraising for schools, churches or clubs in their younger years and they can give you ideas that they know will work through their own experience.
Community Social – Clean off the patio or porch and have a party for the residents, staff, and families and even invite the community. Hire a great band and ask your resident with talent to be part of the entertainment. Let them sing, dance or be the comedian they always wanted to be.
Food – Sell hot dogs, popcorn and soft drinks/tea so the money will cover some of the cost and helpfully add to the activity fund for bingo or outings for the residents.
Games – Set up game booths and sell tickets to play:
• Penny Toss – Toss a penny to land and stay in a tea cup. This is harder than you think since the pennies usually bounce out of the tea cups when tossed from a six foot distance.
• Balloon Pick – Have pieces of paper with numbers printed on them from 1 – 5 and insert it in the balloon before blowing it up so the paper will be inside the balloon. Let the player pick a balloon and with scissors clip the balloon just enough to let the air out and then remove the paper. The number on the paper will be the prize category the player wins. Example – balloon I pick has the number 3 on the paper. I receive a prize from the #3 prize bin.
Get prize donations from local business and or see if your marketing director will provide you with some facility promotional gifts to use as games prizes. Don’t sell crafts or raffle tickets due to this may come across as a carnival or festival of some kind. This is just a great time to open up your facility to the community and marketing can use it to promote the facility as well.
FLOWER POWER
"Be like a flower and turn your face to the sun." ~ Kahlil Gibran
Learn & Listen – Check out lots of information about flowers on Wikipedia. Find the most interesting info and share it with your residents. Ask them what their favorite flower is. Ask how many had flower gardens and what types of flowers they grew.
Game – Ask residents to match the meaning of a flower with the flower name. Suggestions with answer underlined. To find out other flower meanings check out www.aboutflowers.com.
Food – Make flower-shaped sugar cookies. Decorate with food coloring, sprinkles. icing, etc.
Exercise – Pick your music for your exercise activity from the Flower Power generation.
• The Young Rascals – Groovin
• Peter, Paul & Mary – Leaving on a Jet Plane
• Seals & Croft – Summer Breeze
• Tommy James and the Shondells – Crystal Blue Persuasion
• Jonathan Edwards – Sunshine
• Sonny & Cher – I Got You Babe
Craft – Make a garden flower whirligig. You can find instructions for a garden flower whirligig when you search on the internet. You can also make flower collages, flower arrangements, flower bulletin boards, etc.
Game – Challenge your residents to make as many words as possible from the letters in “Flower Power”. They cannot add any new letters. This would be a good team game and the team with the most words wins. Example: power, pew, or, we, low, plow, pool, etc.
Outing – See if there are any Spring Home Shows or Flower events happening in your area. If there are then take your residents so they can see all the latest in flower gardening ideas.
Demonstration – If you can’t take your residents to a home show then see if you can get some florist to come do a flower arrangement demonstration.
CHILDREN'S BOOK DAY
In celebration of National Children’s Book Week (1st or 2nd week in May)
Listen & Learn – Discuss old children’s story book and talk the residents about what type of books were their favorite as a child, what books did they read to their children/grand-children.
Game – Name that story. Read a few lines from a classic children’s story and see if the residents can guess the title. To make this a intergenerational activity as the resident’s grand-children or staff’s children to partners with a resident to help with the Name that story game.
Food – Have fun with your food activity by making some gingerbread houses like in “Hansel and Gretel”, OR make some green eggs and ham from the Dr. Seuss book of the same name, OR make cookies, like in “If you give a Mouse a Cookie”.
Exercise – Take a walk like Goldie Locks did or Red Riding Hood through the woods in a nice park.
Craft – This is a writing/craft class combined. Have ready small notebook for each participating resident. Ask them to write a short children’s story and afterwards decorate the front of the notebook to reflect the title of their story.
Game – Play Charades with children’s book titles. This can be another intergenerational game where the children can help out the residents.
Movie – Suggestions:
• “Nim’s Island” (2008)
• “The Spiderwick Chronicles” (2008)
• “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” (2005)
• “Bridge to Terabithia” (2007)
• “Horton Hears A Who” (2008)
• “Inkheart” (2008)
HUG YOUR CAT DAY - May 30th
Pet therapy – Have cats visit so the residents can pet and hug them on their day.
Learning – Bring in a veterinarian to discuss the different types of cats and cat care. If you cannot get a veterinarian then see if they have an intern that come talk to the resident. If they have some cats to bring that would be good too.
Cooking /Community project – Make cat treats to donate to local animal shelter. Recipes can be found on the internet.
Crafts/Community project – Make cat nip toys to donate to your local animal shelter. OR have residents cut out kitty ties to donate to the veterinarian for his/her clinic as a gift for coming out to talk to residents. Just use any cotton fabric and peaking sheers to cut triangles. Just like scarves, but smaller.
Movie – Cat from Outer Space is an old Disney movie they will enjoy.
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