Meredith

Has he been tested for Covid? One of the big issues of covid is no taste, no smell. Just saying...

Golden Carers has been my go-to guide for the past four years. It has been a pleasure reading what others are doing in their facilities and how I can add to our collection of activities at our facility.

Thank you, too, to Solange and all of the moderators who work at this site. It is a pleasure working with you.

Happy Holidays to everyone and see you next year!

Trish

Thank you so much for the crossord puzzle maker. This is going to help me a lot. I have to hand draw the puzzle on the white board, and with only a small amount of questions, I can draw it quicker. The puzzles are easy, but I'm with skilled/dementia/Alzheimer residents in the morning and higher functioning residents in the afternoon. I will create something for them at a later date! Thanks again.

Robyn:

To add to the list of places to call, sometimes churches will donate flowers if they are left after a funeral. Sometimes funeral homes also have left over flowers. Maybe keep the requests in your town to let people know everything they donate stay in the community.

We have a large screen television in a room where there is generally no activities on two days a week in the afternoon. I let everyone know that I can put on a movie, or they can make use of many games we have in the room. You could put a puzzle in one of the roll up holders for anyone to work on when they are in an open activity room. I would tie it with a bow so that other wandering hands do not disassemble it. Because our facility has personal care as well as skilled residents, I, too, find it difficult to try and keep everyone busy. One of the ideas I keep trying to float is having some of our personal care residents read to some of the skilled residents, sit and have a conversation with someone, play a game with them, pray with them if appropriate, and listen to music or watch a a movie they both like. I've still got resistance to it but I'm making a little headway in that project. Good luck.

Because we have a resident that is afraid of balloons and breaking balloons, we use a beach ball with the noodles and call it "Whack a ball." We sit along two 8 foot rectangular tables and some residents' family members come and help because the beach ball always goes off the table at the end I'm not at. It's a wonderful moving, shaking and exercising game.