Memory Garden June Look Back
Happy summer everybody! It’s finally here and we’ve been taking full advantage of the great weather to get outside whenever possible. Taking walks and golf cart rides around Louis Ferreri Memorial Park are among our residents’ favorite outdoor activities. We’ve been enjoying the gorgeous courtyards as well, whether just relaxing in the sun or watering the gardens. Our pumpkin patch is progressing nicely, we’ve even got a couple of blossoms already!
We held our Rocky Road Ice Cream Social out in the courtyards on a perfect sunshiny day. A great time was had all at the monthly birthday party with cake, ice cream and big band music. National Ice Cream Soda Day just so happened to fall on the first day of summer, so of course we celebrated with an ice cream soda party. Root beer, orange and cola were among the favorite flavors!
On Father’s Day all the guys received a personalized coffee mug full of candy. We all gathered together and celebrated with coffee and donuts.
Our residents enjoyed some delicious strawberry parfaits on National Strawberry Parfait Day. On National Camera Day we held a fun photo shoot day. With many different props to experiment with. Everyone had a blast posing for silly pictures.
Mary Schmidt visits every Friday for “Music w/Mary”, entertaining our residents with music related games, sing-alongs or karaoke. Patrick Walsh joins us on Thursdays for chair yoga, guiding the residents through a session of gentle stretching exercises.
Every Tuesday we take the library cart around to everyone, offering a variety of books to borrow. Wednesday mornings are reserved for coffee house. The residents relax with coffee and cookies while enjoying some touching true stories from the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books.
Our resident bakers gathered this month making fudge brownies on one occasion, served up with a fresh cup of coffee. On another day we baked a cherry cobbler, serving it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to top it off. Our craft club folks painted some patriotic fireworks pictures to help decorate the activity rooms.
For movies this month we got a good chuckle out of some “I Love Lucy” comedies and became kids again watching “The Wizard of Oz”. We had a magazine scavenger hunt, looking for certain items in magazines and cutting them out, trying to find the most items.
“Kazoo Name That Tune” is fast becoming a favorite activity. The residents are given a few notes of a song on a kazoo and they have to either name that tune or sing it.
We played a very competitive game of Summer Jeopardy. All the questions have something to do with summer and of course the more difficult the question, the more points you get, if answered correctly. The residents enjoyed a rowdy game of balloon volleyball, sitting around the table, trying to keep all the balloons in the air by hitting them back and forth to each other.
We put on some upbeat music and played kickball, sitting around in a big circle, kicking the ball to each other. Bounce & Catch is similar only instead of kicking the ball, you bounce it to someone in the circle who has to catch it. Ladder Ball is always a fun game, throwing a short rope with balls on each end at a ladder trying to wrap the rope around a rung for different point values. Other fun games we played include: bingo, bowling, boccie ball, beanbag toss, basket ball, corn hole and Nerf target shooting (shooting suction cup projectiles at a target drawn on the white board).
In addition we played noodle ball (sitting in a big circle, batting balloons around to each other with using pool noodles), frisbee golf (try tossing the frisbee into the basket), Pictionary (try to guess the picture being drawn on the white board), “What’s Next?” (after being given part of a common phrase, song or nursery rhyme, try to guess what comes next) and the 7-Up card game (the residents are dealt 7 cards face up, from a second deck a card is drawn. If it matches one from a player, they turn it over. The first to turn all their cards over wins.).
We played a number of word games on the white board, such as word-in-word (how many different words can you find in one big word), rhyme time (how many words can you think of that rhyme with the word on the board), name 10 (how many things can you think of that fall under a given category) and hangman.
A very relaxing activity that our residents enjoy is coloring or watercolor painting while listening to soothing music.
As you can see, we’re still having fun and keeping active throughout this challenging pandemic crisis. While it’s promising to see a decrease in active COVID cases, we still have to take precautions to keep our residents safe. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel everybody, but continue to play it safe and stay healthy!
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.
