Memory Garden March Look Back

What a March it has been!  Despite the changes in our activities, due to the pandemic, our residents are still having fun and keeping busy!

During the first half of the month, we enjoyed the beautiful harmonies of Saved By Grace. Cindy Sue sang for us as well, bringing along her talented and cute little dog , Macho. Dave Johnson made his monthly appearance, bringing his guitar and accordion. The residents also enjoyed the piano tunes of Lucille Miller during our monthly birthday party. We managed a couple of visits from Don Sandy as he played his accordion during our Wednesday morning coffee house. Spencer Drake also joined us with his guitar playing some old favorites for the residents to sing along to.

Every Thursday morning Patrick Walsh gets our residents moving with a session of chair yoga.

Mary Schmidt joins us on Friday mornings, leading the residents in musical activities such as rhythm circles, sing-alongs or music related games.

We of course had to have a party on St. Patrick’s Day! The residents sipped on mint milkshakes with brownies while tapping their toes to their favorite Irish tunes.

We brought out the fancy party hats again for our monthly tea party and enjoyed a wide variety of tea flavors with cookies and mini lemon cakes.

The residents also had a great time at our ice cream social. We devoured hot fudge sundaes while playing a game of “True or False”.

We tapped into our creative side with a fun spring craft, making gorgeous tissue paper flowers to brighten up the activity room. We also got a start on the Easter craft, making clay eggs that we’ll be painting and decorating next month.

For our “Take-Out-Tuesday we brought in some Kentucky Fried Chicken and enjoyed a delicious lunch of chicken tenders.

We started a kazoo band this month. Our residents hummed out familiar favorite songs on their kazoos.

On National Let’s Laugh Day we had a good laugh watching episodes of “I Love Lucy”.

Doing our best to stay active, we brought out a number of our physical games such as kickball (Kicking the ball back and forth to each other while sitting in a big circle), balloon volleyball (Try to keep the balloons in the air by hitting them to each other while sitting around the table), beanbag toss and snowball toss (Toss the fake snowball into the hole on the game board. The residents also enjoyed frisbee golf (Tossing frisbees into a basket), ring toss, putt-putt, penny toss, bowling and Nerf target shooting (Shooting suction cup projectiles at a target drawn on the white board). “What’s in the bag?” was a fun game for our folks where they had to put their hand in a bag and without looking they had to guess what the item in the bag was by feeling it.

Some other fun games we played are Bingo, Springtime Hangman, Pictionary, Word in word (How many smaller words can you make out of one large word.), Rhyme Time (How many words can you think of that rhyme with the word written on the white board?) and the 7-Up card game (Deal out 7 cards face up. From a separate deck draw a card. If anyone has a card that matches it, they turn it over. The first to turn all their cards over wins!).

We’ve taken every precaution we can to keep our residents safe during this world wide crisis and doing our best to continue providing their favorite activities. Looking forward to more fun events for our folks next month! Stay healthy everyone and keep positive. If you have any questions or comments for upcoming activities, please contact Margaret Wright, Memory Garden Activities Coordinator at (716)488-9434 ext 2226, or email at MWright@tanglewoodmanor.com.