Name That Survey Result

I am not the first activities person to survey residents of a retirement community about their activity desires. However I may have been more excited about it than most. I pored over the results with highlighters, post-its, a calculator. I made charts and a schedule to complement the level of interest: anything that someone gave a high rating to was put on the schedule, anything that many people gave high ratings to was put on more than once/ month.

One big thing I learned from it was that many of my residents care greatly about music and like to listen to it. Since this can be done independently I hadn't really thought of doing music as an activity, especially since I don't sing or play instruments myself. It seemed to be popular enough to happen weekly and deserve prime time (the hour before lunch).

I'm happy to say our music socials have been going really well. Each week I bring in a CD with mixed artists and we listen and try to guess the song title and who sings it. At first I found in a closet a 3-CD set of music from the 1950's. Many of our socials turned into dance parties and I was really enjoying them... but there were only 3. At the library I couldn't find any such samplers and I was beginning to panic when I tried a new search for "depression era music". What came up was music from World War II and we listened to the first today.

If I didn't have the cover in front of me I wouldn't be able to guess anything other than Sinatra. However, I'm glad I'm exposing myself. They are glad too because "they just don't make music like this anymore". Some of the funniest things I've heard at my job are senior citizens impersonating present day music (dah rah do do pzzang! hubba hubba rah!) and it does make me feel a little ashamed when compared to the slow, meaningful, and talented songs of their day. Also it amazes me how many songs they can remember simply because they listened to them so often. I think if I tried to do the same thing with a recent sample of the last decade I'd be hopeless just due to magnitude. Plus, song titles and singers aren't always announced on the radio and I listen to mp3 more often so I'd have to look down and read the information in order for it to stick. Another difference is that nowadays all you need is money to make an album (or 3) while performing skill was really necessary to get produced back then.

In the picture I have an example of the simple sewing project we did today: felt bookmarks. In addition to felt they use paper clips and embroidery floss and they have allowed many residents to do some sewing even after having "given it up". Of course I made mine to resemble the sugar glider I bring with me every day to work. I used to have this activity sharing time with ceramics but decided to split the two so that people wouldn't be rushed and come later if they needed to.