Activities That Can Engage And Delight Your Senior Living Home Residents
Senior citizens are too often shuffled out of sight and forced to play bingo in an assisted living home until they pass away. While bingo can be a fun experience, it's simply not enough to keep the average senior citizen engaged and happy. The following activities are designed to delight your senior living home residents in companies like Heritage Commons and keep them actively involved in their lives.
Getting Back to Nature
Nature trips offer a variety of emotional and physical benefits, such as relaxation, decreased blood pressure, increased attention span and much more. Take your residents on excursions into the wild and watch their health increase.
Discuss what kind of activities your residents would enjoy and make plans to take as many as possible. Hiking, fishing and camping are just the tip of the iceberg. Try to find locations with allowances for your residents in wheelchairs or with walkers. These allowances include:
- Stairs for easier access
- Wheelchair ramps
- Picnic tables
- Benches
Indoor Gardening
Gardening is a popular past time, but outdoor gardening can be too difficult for physically disabled senior citizens. Thankfully, indoor gardening is a popular and easy alternative that just about anybody can do. There are dozens of indoor gardening kits that will give your residents the chance to grow plants, flowers and even vegetables in their bedroom.
The benefits of indoor gardening include:
- Improved air quality
- Decreased risk of respiratory conditions
- High-quality food
- Increased mental and physical activity
Indoor gardening can also increase your resident's social lives as they discuss their plants, growing methods and results.
Staying Physically Active
Most senior citizens in an assisted living environment are likely unable to perform strenuous exercise. Thankfully, there are a variety of exercises that are designed to maintain physical strength in the elderly.
These techniques include:
- Chair exercises
- Walks
- Shopping
- Therapy dough for hand strength
- Simple stretches
Integrating these physical activities into your senior citizens' lives should take no more than an hour or two of their day.
Playing in the Band
Creating your own assisted living home musical group can bring the joy of performing to your seniors' lives. Start by finding musically skilled residents in your home and finding them instruments. Try to get a logical selection of instruments involved, such as guitar, banjo and percussion.
However, you shouldn't exclude anybody that is interested in performing. Instruments such as kazoos, harmonicas and maracas are perfect for residents unskilled in performing.
Once you've gotten the band together, have them select songs they want to play and hold weekly concerts where everyone can get together, chat, listen to music and even dance.
These activities are just a sample of the ways you can keep your senior citizens happy. Other exciting activities include bowling, shopping, going to church and even visiting other assisted living homes. Any of these activities will keep your seniors smiling for years to come.
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