Chet

What is your facility doing for Mother's Day? We are doing a Mother's Day Tea with entertainment by Mini Pearl. An impersonator, of course, she does a great job and the residents love her. I will pick up some fancy treats and set out the china tea cups and saucers. Kori

I love it. The problem I have is that I don't knit, crochet or sew. Do you? or do the residents do their projects and you just visit with them? Kori

It is hard to find adult activities. One thing I do is a tea party. We have tea pots, cups and saucers that were donated. I buy some fancy cookie or cake and use tea from the kitchen. It is inexpensive. We also have the local library host programs. This service is free. One of their program series was 20th century icons. It was very popular. Kori

The staff where I work are hot and cold, if they think the activity is cool, they bring them, if not they say "you don't want to do that do you" One trick that works is to email the families the calendar. They tell the nursing staff to take there family member to programs. I also try to get the staff involved in planning the programs. for example they choose the menu for red hat luncheon, now I have 95% participation at the luncheons. What I need help with now is weekend activities, it's only me for activity staff. Does anyone have ideas for staff ran programs? Thanks, Kori

Hello, I am new to programming. I work in an assisted living facility. There are only 5 men out of 55 residents. It is hard to get the men together. I offer a men's club once a month ran by a veteran in his late 50's. I feel as if the men are bored and so is the volunteer. My idea is to have a horse race that is taped. Let the men put bets on horses with pretend money, maybe have a prize for the one with the most money or just bet for fun. Has anyone tried this? thanks, Kori

I had an idea for a treasure hunt. Pick a resident and post a small biography about that resident. Do not name the resident being feature and let the staff find out which resident resident is the treasure. You could do this each day for the week.

I need to let off some steam!!!!!!!!! The famous restructioning is under way. Our new boss showed us a sheet that represents the flow of a residents "12 hour" day. The sheet is broke into 1/2 hour inclements. She would like an activity for every 1/2 from 8am to 8pm. There are only two of us for 85 residents (45 are rehab residents that change every week, with about 10 admissions and discharges per week) To make this work she would like us to adjust our schedule to work partical shifts, which to me means 7 days a week and fill in the time we are not there with volunteers. I live 30minutes from work, with gas $2.75 per gallon. Its crazy for me to drive to work for a few hours. Don't get me started on volunteers. There are very few that are reliable and able to run a program or even want to. It is work. The residents don't just show up to programs. I go to their rooms. Sell the program to them, transfer them to w/c, transport them to the program, run the program, take the residents back to their room, transfer them back to recliners, clean up the program. And this is certainly not done in a 1/2 hour. When I try to explain this to her. She says "break down the barriors" or a "we can make this happen" I use to leave work feeling good about the things I did, and looking forward to the next day activity. Now I feel like I can't do enough and what will change tomorrow. Let's completely disregard accesments, planning, shopping, one on one, set up, ect...... There is no time for this with an activity every 1/2 hour. Do I ride this out, or do I run? chet

How about a volunteer tea. Purchase tea cups with saucers and let the volunteers take the tea cup and saucer home. Serve some snacks.

does anyone have a recipe for making lotion Thanks, Kori

Either for Thanksgiving or Christmas I wanted to have the residents make something for the staff. I found a cute angel made of paper clip, bead and ribbon Now I need a caregiver thank you poem. Does anyone know a good poem? Thank You, Kori