Halloween 2019

 The "When The Frost is on the Punkin" poem was written by a Hoosier so we read it for patients. We also had candy corn guessing, candy corn parfaits (made of whipped topping, pineapple, and mandarin oranges), pumpkin circle paintings, and white out tape mummies.

Indigenous Peoples Day

Columbus Day made me a little nervous. There is a trend to celebrate Indigenous Peoples instead, or in addition to and I wasn't sure who would be offended by what. We did talk about both and at the end of the day created crests for our families with meaningful colors and words.

You're the Number 2!

 In October our gift for the staff was useful and cute. We made pencil toppers from pipe cleaners. I ordered pre-sharpened pencils since we all know how useless an un-sharpened pencil can be.

Falling for Wreaths

 Paper Plates with holes cut into the center became festive wreaths of the first day of Autumn. We learned about equinoxes and solstices and got glue all over our fingers.

Friday the 13th

Full moons are rumored to be tougher times for dementia patients. Added to that, a Friday the 13th, and I'm surprised any showed up to work on this day in September.

The patients and I chatted about things we're afraid of, why people have superstitions, did chair exercises 13 times, gave B13 away for free in BINGO, and decoupaged black cats onto newspaper strip backgrounds to end the day.

Gray Maneuvers

Staff wore gray on Respect the Aged day, a holiday in Japan. We began with relaxing chair yoga, then did one of my new favorite things and added sticky notes to a laminated sign with our list of phrase finishers. The phrase was "Elders Deserve Respect Because..." and they said things like "they worked hard all of their life," "everyone deserves respect", "they gave respect", and "they raised us".

I will re-use this poster for new answers next month. In the meantime, it and others stay on a board in the common room.

In the afternoon I added gray to decoupage and we painted "respect your elders" onto canvases. Then we finished the day with heated towel massages so I could show the patients my respect and admiration.

51 Card Pick Up

Have a deck that is incomplete? Instead of throwing away the cards, use them as brushes. Our patients did to varying effects.