Teri

Pinterest has a ton of amazing ideas for residents in various stages of Alzheimer’s. I also recommend researching the best friends approach. There are several books out there that are centered around this style and list activities, tools, and ways to engage your residents in discussion.

I work in a memory care unit with residents with varying stages of dementia. I always include those residents who are non verbal and are not physically able to do much because they still have intact senses, smell, hearing, sight, etc. We use hand over hand techniques and I always try to include as many activities as I can that involve smells, music, and touch, like applying scented lotion to hands, playing soothing music at meals, aromatherapy using a diffuser and essential oils. I have seen nonverbal residents in late stages of dementia talk for the first time in months or sing because we reached them through non traditional methods. Not all activities have to be physical. sometimes it’s just putting some play dough in someone’s hand and letting them squeeze and enjoy the texture, or passing around different scents and letting residents try to guess what it is and letting them reminisce about what memories they trigger. We try to create and carry out our activities so it touches all levels of functioning in a meaningful way.