Loving Pets

 On Pet Lovers day, we chatted about pets U.S. presidents have had over the years. We made a list of all the interesting animals patients have kept in their homes. We watched cat videos, did a cartoon animal guess, and finished with clay rolling onto paw prints. The clay is a great activity for the hands and using a shape on paper helps the patients not feel too intimidated by the art.

Bag Pipe Day

 For Bagpipe day we listened to Celtic music and made gifts for the staff. They were bags that could be used to hold masks. The thank you notes from patients were attached with pipe cleaners.

Laundry Workers

 An activity that was loads of fun (after learning about the history of laundry) was cutting out items of clothing the patients liked and gluing them onto pages with boxes and hangers. To celebrate laundry workers, we also did laundry tosses into baskets and ended the day with warm laundry (clean blanket) rest and massages.

Drum Circle

Drum circle is a possibility thanks to plastic drumsticks from Amazon, gray bins, and cleanings in between uses. 

I use a lot of old rock hits and other well known songs like "Beat It", "All She Wants to Do Is Dance", "One Love", "We Will Rock You", and "Respect". I often suggest a pattern for the patients to imitate (fast, slow, switching hands, hitting the sides of the drums, making a pattern on the top of the drum, etc) but also encourage them to do whatever sounds good. Some can only use one hand, some clap or tap their feet. Some dance or sing. 

We also chat about the songs as they come up on shuffle. 

My last song is always "Jump In the Line" because they are warmed up and we can end on a high note. The song gives directions so we shake our sticks, hit them together, dance, and sing as a group until the final verse.


 

Feasts for Saints Peter and Paul

We had a feast of activities for Saints Peter and Paul. I did a special devotions and we changed our race game to fish. Bible trivia and gifts for the staff ended a lovely day.

Memorial Day

Always my favorite Holiday to work with the patients! Each of the patients and staff got a poppy sticker and we discussed what the day meant to us. We thanked veterans and shared people in our lives who served. We played patriotic songs and tried to guess the titles and singers. I shared information about the history of the songs and most of the patients enjoyed reminiscing. At 3PM we paused our word games for a moment of silence. Then we ended the day with warm towel massages as a final thank you to their generation.

Mod Podge

We used mod podge, construction paper, and bits from the Indianapolis Star newspaper to celebrate mod podge day. Since Covid was very prevalent in the news there was a theme for the art.

We also did a balloon dodge exercise and mod podge phrases game.