sccad

Sounds interesting. I might put a little spin on it and have several prizes. Only one, they would FLIP out! They are very, very spoiled when it comes to prizes. Thanks so much for the suggestion!

Hello! This first part probably goes more in the introduction section, however I feel it pertinent to the discussion to give you a little background on my facility. I am the Activity Director of a 75 bed facility, plus we have an Alzheimer "Unit". I recently took over the front half of the building, coming from being the Activity Coordinator of the "Unit". The lady before me was lazy, and uncreative. She continued to do the same activities week after week after week because it was easy and the residents were and are bored with them. We have daily prizes that are given for our afternoon activities. The current ones we are using right now are Bingo (I have changed it up a bit by having them pick their own bingo numbers, they seem to enjoy this), we play Poker Keno (known to some as Pokeno) and we have one more called Rob the Table. Basically that consists of putting out a bunch of prizes and having them roll dice and picking and "robbing" from other tables mates. They enjoy these activities, but they are bored with them, frankly, so am I. I am looking for different afternoon activities that are large group activites, such as bingo, where the residents can win prizes. I don't have a large budget, 0.08 cents per day per resident which amounts to about 175.00 a month. Our afternoon activity usually goes for about an hour, and we have a very large space to "play" in. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks, Nicole

I generally order all my crafts from Oriental Trading. Here is a link to their website, however I also get a catalog about every month sent straight to the facility. Their crafts are VERY inexpensive, you can make 24 crafts for 4.99. They have crafts for each holiday, even the not so big ones, Earth Day, President's Day, the holidays that just don't get as much attention. Another plus is, they are not hard to make. A lot of it is putting foam shapes together to look like a four leaf clover, or an Easter bunny or whatever. I really recommend looking into them Nicole

This post seems to have been posted a while back, but I thought I would share some input. We play bingo and pokeno (we call it poker keno) two times a week in the afternoons. I have recently had them making their own bingo cards. I simply typed out the numbers that go under each letter, for instance under B you can choose 1-15, I you choose 15-30 and so on. Then I gave them Bingo sheets I created and allowed them to pick what numbers they wanted to go where. They hesitated at first, my bunch isn't big on change, but after they got the hang of it, they LOVE it! I love it as well, often they get huffy with me and tell me I am calling all the wrong numbers, or that they got a defective bingo card. Now I tell them, well you choose those numbers yourself, and they have stopped complaining. The other game we place once a week is called Rob the Table. I set out numerous prizes in the middle of a long table (4 tables put together), and they go around the table taking turns rolling foam dice. If they roll a 7 or 11 they get to choose a prize out of the middle. If they roll snake eyes (two 1's) they get to choose 2 prizes. Once the prizes have been taken from the middle, we continue rolling the dice, however they start "robbing" from each other. If a resident rolls a 7 or 11, they are allowed to choose ANY prize that ANYONE has. If they roll snake eyes, they get to choose two prizes. I always announce the last 3 rounds as our time is dwindling down, then after the last person rolls the dice, I announce "what you have in front of you, is yours" They absolutely adore this game. The prizes vary each week as a lot of them are donations given by family members, staff members or sometimes by other residents. We have blankets, crackers, cookies, gloves, hats the list goes on and on. I have recently started adding a mystery prize,(several prizes in a brown lunch sack) and they are not allowed to know what is in there until the game is over. It is amazing how the prizes float around from person to person, and they really get into it.