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I HAVE A QUESTION WITH EVENING ACTIVITIES. I AM THE ONLY ACTIVITY DIRECTOR. I HAVE NO AIDE OR ANYTHING AND MY BOSS IS CUTTING OUR HOURS...DOES ANYONE HAVE A GOOD IDEA OF SOME ACTIVITY I CAN PUT ON MY CALENDAR FOR THE EVENINGS THAT I DONT HAVE TO BE HERE FOR?! LIKE AN EVERYDAY 6:30 ACTIVITY OR SOEMTHIN LIKE THAT. MOST OF MY ACTIVITIES END AT 2:30 BECAUSE I HAVE TO LEAVE WORK SHORTLY AFTER.

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Some ideas that have worked for us is asking nursing to put movies on-for us this needs to be in a location where staff can provide some supervision of residents for those that are at risk, providing pencils & paper puzzles (activityconnection.com is a subscription & Creative Forcasting has good ones), trivia, asking a high functioning resident to lead bunco or dominoes, contacting area churches to see if a Sun. school class or youth group would conduct a program such as bingo or sing-a-long. I know contacting churches & getting other things takes time & you can't have much of that if you're by yourself. How many residents do you have?

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Some ideas that have worked for us is asking nursing to put movies on-for us this needs to be in a location where staff can provide some supervision of residents for those that are at risk, providing pencils & paper puzzles (activityconnection.com is a subscription & Creative Forcasting has good ones), trivia, asking a high functioning resident to lead bunco or dominoes, contacting area churches to see if a Sun. school class or youth group would conduct a program such as bingo or sing-a-long. I know contacting churches & getting other things takes time & you can't have much of that if you're by yourself. How many residents do you have?

 

 

RIGHT NOW OUR CENSUS IS LOW BUT USUALLY HIGHER 70-80

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I HAVE A QUESTION WITH EVENING ACTIVITIES. I AM THE ONLY ACTIVITY DIRECTOR. I HAVE NO AIDE OR ANYTHING AND MY BOSS IS CUTTING OUR HOURS...DOES ANYONE HAVE A GOOD IDEA OF SOME ACTIVITY I CAN PUT ON MY CALENDAR FOR THE EVENINGS THAT I DONT HAVE TO BE HERE FOR?! LIKE AN EVERYDAY 6:30 ACTIVITY OR SOEMTHIN LIKE THAT. MOST OF MY ACTIVITIES END AT 2:30 BECAUSE I HAVE TO LEAVE WORK SHORTLY AFTER.

 

We have an 111 bed facility. During the evenings, when the nurse assistant have some down time usually around 8pm they will do activities for me. I would leave out a plastic bin on each unit filled with small crafts, crossword puzzles, writing tablets and pens, small gardening project, videos/sing a longs. Whatever the scheduled activity is for the evening(usually Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), the cna would get their residents together and do small group activities with them. They say it helps the evenings go by faster and they look forward to it. Try it with your cna's!

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  • 5 months later...
I HAVE A QUESTION WITH EVENING ACTIVITIES. I AM THE ONLY ACTIVITY DIRECTOR. I HAVE NO AIDE OR ANYTHING AND MY BOSS IS CUTTING OUR HOURS...DOES ANYONE HAVE A GOOD IDEA OF SOME ACTIVITY I CAN PUT ON MY CALENDAR FOR THE EVENINGS THAT I DONT HAVE TO BE HERE FOR?! LIKE AN EVERYDAY 6:30 ACTIVITY OR SOEMTHIN LIKE THAT. MOST OF MY ACTIVITIES END AT 2:30 BECAUSE I HAVE TO LEAVE WORK SHORTLY AFTER.

How about getting entertainment in at that time. Volunteers might be able to do a couple days a week. Contact the local schools to see if any hight school students can come in to get service hours. Call the local pound or get someone with a dog to come in for an hour a week to visit or check the local senior center. many seniors enjoy just chatting and may be willing to come and sit with our residents and chat. Send letters to your local churches requesting help. Ask them to put it in the bulletin.

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How about getting entertainment in at that time. Volunteers might be able to do a couple days a week. Contact the local schools to see if any hight school students can come in to get service hours. Call the local pound or get someone with a dog to come in for an hour a week to visit or check the local senior center. many seniors enjoy just chatting and may be willing to come and sit with our residents and chat. Send letters to your local churches requesting help. Ask them to put it in the bulletin.

 

 

We have church services three days a week and movie night 2 days a week. Our CNA's put on the movies for them and help get them to church on the night shift when I am not there.

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I HAVE A QUESTION WITH EVENING ACTIVITIES. I AM THE ONLY ACTIVITY DIRECTOR. I HAVE NO AIDE OR ANYTHING AND MY BOSS IS CUTTING OUR HOURS...DOES ANYONE HAVE A GOOD IDEA OF SOME ACTIVITY I CAN PUT ON MY CALENDAR FOR THE EVENINGS THAT I DONT HAVE TO BE HERE FOR?! LIKE AN EVERYDAY 6:30 ACTIVITY OR SOEMTHIN LIKE THAT. MOST OF MY ACTIVITIES END AT 2:30 BECAUSE I HAVE TO LEAVE WORK SHORTLY AFTER.

 

Do you have to leave work at 2:30pm or can you be flexible with your schedule? Maybe you could come in later one day a week and stay later. I do think it's important for the Activity Director to be visible to afternoon shift as well as being in the facility at that time to see how things run. Being there on afternoons, even if it's one day/week, helps to establish a relationship with afternoon shift. I realize that working later might not be popular, maybe not even possible, but it really does work to your benefit if you can be seen by the afternoon staff. Sounds like they are good about helping with activities so you're lucky there. Good luck.

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I thoght that some of you might find this interesting:

 

Ten state statutes mandate weekend and/or evening activities programming. Arkansas requires weekend activities. Oregon regulations stipulate the need for activities programming six days per week. Where as Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio, and Washington require activities on both the evenings and weekends.

 

Your facility may have it in their policy & procedure manual that you hold evening & weekend activities, so be sure to check that out.

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  • 4 years later...

I am in the same boat! I am here at my facility from 8am-4pm Monday thru Friday and have had to deal with furloughs and no staff. I am a one person show! So I have planned the Wii that is always in use , cards, table games, and if there is letters that need stuffing. the residents love this! It's just finding things to keep them bust:)

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  • 1 year later...

Just a FYI be sure that when activies are held and your not there that someone writes down the names of those who attened it. If it's not written/charted then it didn't happen. Maybe you have a resident that you know who attends these evening/weekend activies and they are able of take down names of eveyone who comes. Make them a resident volunteer. Then you can collec the names from him/her or they could put them in your box etc.

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  • 1 month later...

I think many of the answers here are great. I would surely lean towards self-directed activities. Any games they like would be perfect (poker, dominoes, bridge), and an evening movie where the concierge makes popcorn might work. I hope this helps. 

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there are several I do on the weekend. since I do not work on sat or sun. you can use theses. do a scavenger hunt, walk your facility finding item's that are located thru out and where they are located at then make a list of the items and copy the list for each resident that wants to participate and have them locate the items write it down and turn it in the next day to you. who ever finds the most wins.

movie night set it up for a nurse to push play after dinner.

 

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  • 2 years later...

The easiest thing to do may be movies or other self-directed activities, as someone else mentioned.  If you can, I would see if I could get volunteers to help out, but the first thing I would do is check with your company's policy to see if evening activities are allowed.  I would also be tempted to check and see if your state allows you to run activities in the evening and what the regulations are.

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