Royalty Day

About once a month, I give a day a theme and all the activities for that day center around it. June's theme day was "Royalty" and the schedule looked like this:

• Gardening fit for a Queen
• Regal Discussion Social
• Herald Stroll: Calendar Distribution
• Princess Tea
• Crown Making
• A Very Royal June Celebration
• Kings in the Corner
• Knightly Resident Led Wii Bowling (after dinner)
  

For the discussion I got a few books from the library and we talked about what we really thought it would be like to be royalty. This is what I love most about my job, and how it is so different from working with children: we had a dynamic talk about pros and cons of growing up to be in the royal family or coming into it later in life. We talked about the difficulty with being such a role model and how you would need to be careful about your image for your entire life. When it was almost lunch time I asked everyone at the table to brainstorm about what a typical day would be like for someone of this most noble class. We came up with something like this:

• be woken up
• discuss clothes and outfits and get help with dressing if need be
• served breakfast
• discuss schedule for the day with very little wiggle room
• served lunch
• may make choices about dinner
• forced to socialize
• at all times servants are around to attend to you

I read over our regal itinerary, then posed this question: "How is this day any different from your own here at the retirement community?" 

Princess Tea I composed of unsweetened ice tea with a little sugar-free kiwi strawberry. We have both of those in dispensers. For the foam crowns I brought in an example and we quickly got to work. I showed everyone how I had made a design along one length, and cut it out. Then I cut out a thinner strip of equal length and attached it with paper clips so that it was adjustable. My inspiration was this:

However, we had no stickers or buttons. I provided ribbon to wrap around and for those who wanted jewels I found a stash of costume rings and made holes to punch them through. They could have been made of paper and many other embellishments but I wanted to use supplies on hand.

Our celebration is a time us to acknowledge all the good things that happened during the month: new family members, birthdays, physical therapy accomplishments, etc. It's also just a good time to have fun. With that in mind I made a way for us to have a joust. A sturdy black wheelchair was our noble steed, a pool noodle the lance, a marker the point, and three helium balloons of unequal point value our goal. Here is a picture of me in royal garb announcing "Let the Joust Begin":

To top off the celebration I got some joke books from the library and acted the court jester. The funniest was a knock knock joke:

Flashley: Knock Knock

Mary: Who's there?

Flashley: Little Old Lady

Mary: Little Old Lady Who?

Flashley: Why Mary, I didn't realize you could yodel!

The entire day cost $0 and I won't soon forget it.