Memory Garden February Look Back
Our residents here at Memory Garden have enjoyed a wide variety of fun activities throughout the month of February. Celebrating the Super Bowl, we threw a pizza party, devouring Honest John’s pizza and playing a competitive game of football toss.
On Valentines Day each resident received a valentine with yummy homemade chocolate suckers. In the afternoon the residents attended a Valentines Day brownie social enjoying a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of a decadent chocolate fudge brownie, all topped with chocolate and caramel syrup. We celebrated National Carrot Cake Day by serving up delicious carrot cake with cream cheese frosting complimented by a hot cup of coffee during coffee house. National Heavenly Hash Day gave us yet another reason to have an ice cream social! Everybody loves Heavenly Hash ice cream! Our resident chefs gathered together in the kitchen to make their own pasta from scratch. They cranked out hand made spaghetti through a pasta maker, cooked it up and served it with scrumptious homemade spaghetti sauce. The monthly birthday party was a blast, as usual, with hit music from the 60’s along with cake and ice cream.
Every Thursday morning Mary Schmidt joins us for “Music with Mary”, bringing with her a different music related activity every week. A resident favorite! Wednesday afternoons are reserved for coffee house. The residents enjoy coffee, cookies and conversation with great company! Sunday mornings the residents watch a church service on the television and enjoy some inspirational reading. We share bible verses, prayers, daily devotionals and stories from our “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books.
Our crafters created beautiful fabric heart wall hangings. Perfect decorations for Valentines Day! “Painting with Jill” is always fun and interesting! Jill Dunn guides our residents through a course in painting with water colors, teaching them how to create pictures based on a favorite memory. We had some very nice works of art!
We tried out a new game called Hula Hoop Lasso. The residents really seemed to have a lot of fun with it. Players take a hula hoop with a rope tied to it and tosses it at an orange cone. As soon as they get the hoop around the cone they have to pull it in as fast as they can until it crosses the line on the floor. Each player is timed, of course the player who completes the task the fastest wins! Charades is a game that makes us all laugh. A player has to act out a secret word with out speaking, trying to convey what the word is to their team mates. It can get pretty goofy! Everybody put on their thinking caps for our favorite word games. We played “Name 10” (Name at least ten items in a given category), Hangman (try to guess what the given word is, one letter at a time) and Rhyme Time (how many words can you think of that rhyme with a given word).
The residents love music related activities so we enjoyed our favorite sing alongs. We also brought out the maraca eggs so they could shake to the music. Great exercise for the upper body! Another fun music activity is “Kazoo Name That Tune”. The residents have to guess what song is being played on the kazoo, or they can sing the next line. We usually end up singing the whole song. We picked the resident’s brains with some fun random trivia questions as well as with a game called “What’s Next?”(after being given the first part of a common phrase, song or nursery rhyme, try to guess what comes next).
The 7-Up card game is always a hit. Each player receives 7 cards, face up. The dealer draws a card from a separate deck. If a player has a card that matches it, they turn that card over. The first player to turn over all their cards wins! We played Pictionary (be the 1st to guess what is being drawn on the white board) as well as the ever popular game of BINGO complete with candy prizes.
Keeping active, we brought out our favorite physical games, including the always fun balloon volleyball (try to keep all the balloons in the air by hitting them to each other while sitting around a table) and kickball (kicking the ball to each other while sitting in a big circle). Adding some upbeat music to sing along with makes these games even more fun! The residents also enjoyed bowling, cornhole (try to toss the beanbags into the hole in the game board), ring toss, frisbee golf (try to toss the frisbee into the basket) and Beanbag Twister (players spin the color wheel, then toss the beanbags onto the dots on the mat that match the color that they spun).
Other more challenging games played were Nerf target shooting (try to knock down the cups worth the most points by shooting them with a Nerf gun), skee ball (roll the ball up the ramp trying to get it to drop into one of the bowls on the other side), putt-putt and table bowling. Ladder ball was a big hit (toss a small rope with a ball on each end at the ladder trying to get it to wrap around a rung) and Giant Kerplunk is a very suspenseful game in which each player in turn pulls out one of the many sticks holding up a bunch of marbles without letting any marbles fall.
As you can see we’ve been keeping pretty busy inside while the snow flies outside but we’re all getting a little case of cabin fever. Winter is finally winding down and we’re looking forward to Spring weather and the chance to get outside. Longer days and more sunshine are just around the corner!
Stay safe and stay healthy everybody.
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.
