We Treasure our Volunteers

Each year we host a Volunteer Appreciation lunch for the volunteers who serve in our retirement community. We look towards making this a memorable event that shows the volunteers just how valuable they are to us. I have shared a few other volunteer appreciation ideas with you over the years and you can still find them on the A-Z Ideas page.

This year our theme was "We Treasure Our Volunteers." We used a pirate theme for this event and it was a lot of fun for us and or the residents. We started with our decorations. I found a lot of what we used on Amazon. For the centerpieces, we used a small pirates chest with beads coming out of it. At first we thought that these were too small, but they really were just right.

Next, we used a chest that I had in storage as our focal point on our gift table. You can see it in the picture. I've looked on Amazon and found something similar if you need a chest for this or another upcoming event.

Our gifts were wine totes... but don't tell the residents in my community that! I called them loot bags and suggested that they use them to take a magazine to the doctor's office, or to bring individual bottles of water with them when they go out. Our community is just now transitioning into a BYOB community and there are a few residents who really are against it, so I was trying to avoid the "walk on the plank" by those people. Everyone really did know what the item was intended for.

We filled each bag with filler at the bottom and then individually wrapped candy at the top. This was really just done for presentation, since the gift was the bag itself.  You can see from the picture that we filled the table with the chest full of bags in the center and the balance of the gifts on the sides. We used "jewels and coins" to complete the scene.

I wish we had this pirate scene setter in the room. We did have something smaller on the podium to complete the look in the room.

Our "sister-community" also did the pirate theme, but she did hers a bit differently. Instead of giving each volunteer a token gift, she arranged for really nice raffle prizes to be awarded.

Halloween Trunk Party

Halloween time! It is a time of costumes, children, candy, and CARS! Trunk or Treat events for Halloween have become more popular as safe places for children to Trick or Treat. In my area, it is done mostly through churches.These are my thoughts in a nutshell....

• Invite residents to participate (decorate car their car, dress in costume if they want, and hand out candy)
• Show residents ideas (see below websites) on decorating their cars
• Plan an outing to stores that will provide opportunities to buy items necessary (candy & decorations)
• Invite the local elementary schools 1st and 2nd grade classes.(This could be any organization you want to. Boys and Girls Clubs, Women in Distress, Girl Scouts/Boy Scouts, etc.)
• Families attending must RSVP to me so we can control how many attend 
• Families will receive a car pass for their car to enter our community
• Resident's decorated cars will be spaced out in our parking lot
• Halloween music will be playing in the parking lot
• Time of event will be on October 31 from 5:00 pm until 7:00 pm
• Parking area for the guest families will be designated
• Children will walk from car to car to get candy
• Residents who participate will be served a "thank you" dinner at the conclusion of the event
• Children will be asked to vote on their favorite car decoration.
• Prize for the best decorated car

Things to think about:

• Face painting
• Carnival games with a Halloween-themed 
• Costume contest
• Refreshments

Some spook-tacular websites to find more inspiration:

• https://www.pinterest.com/recharging/trunk-or-treat-car-decorations/
• http://thenewswheel.com/trunk-or-treat-decoration-ideas
• http://stayathomemoms.about.com/od/halloween/tp/Trunk-Or-Treat-Trunk-Ideas.htm

By the time you are reading this, it will be to late to do this for this year. Take time now to make yourself a note on your August 2018 calendar to start working on this! You will be glad you planned ahead when you see it. By the way, if you community is non-profit like mine is, you will be able to write this up for your social accountability requirements. 

Royal Baby Shower

My first event to be include in a National magazine was our Royal Baby Shower! Check out the story written below the video to see how we celebrated the royal baby and also supported a local charity for mothers and babies!

It was also covered on CNN's Headline News and locally in the Sun Sentinel at Baby Shower for Harry and Meghan

4 Pictures 1 Word Game for the Big Screen

Many of you who have played 4 Pictures 1 Word, know that this brain game is available as an app for your computer, tablet or phone for free. That is great, but it does not allow a team to play and is not audience friendly if you wanted to present it at your retirement community (or other social gathering). 

After some time and effort, I made a 4 Pictures and 1 Word game slide show that you can use in your community. I did use the app for suggestions and the Internet for the pictures. I am glad to share this with you so that you will not have to spend the hours that I did in creating this game. If you get the urge to make one also, please come back to this blog page and share it.  I played this last week with a group of about 25 independent living residents. We did not get through all of the slides due to time constraints..... but I was glad I did not run out of slides in my hour that I had their attention. I will be playing this with them again... and would love to have other slides to add to it for the future.

Enjoy.

Brain Games

Recently we hosted our senior Olympics program. This year we added a new event called Brain Games. I found a really good link for education on the difference between brain games and brain training games.  After looking at that link and reading through some other online material, I realized that there is a difference between training your brain and brain games. Be mindful (pun intended) that you are not qualified to train resident's brains unless you have gone to training for it. We, as activities professionals however, are very capable of playing brain games with those who are interested in our communities. Here is a good starting point for brain games.

Recently, I introduced Scattergories, (refill sheets) Apples to Apples, Wii Jeopardy and Wii Wheel of Fortune.  They are fun games that required your brain.

I created a Name that Tune game on my own since I could not find anything that would have been appropriate for this generation to identify with. I downloaded music from the 30's and 40's to my laptop and played the beginning of the songs only. I asked the residents to identify the song title. I gave them an option to play as a group as a single. There are plenty of studies that tell us the importance of music therapy, and maybe you have a music therapist in your community. I am not suggesting that I (or you) can do their job, but I will say that this game had the residents thinking about the songs, sharing what was happening in their life at the time, and some even sang along when I played the answer to the song at the end of the program.

4 Pictures, One Word is the next game that I am creating. You will be able to find it on your phone or tablet in the app store, but it is usually a game for one person to play. I am using the examples that I find on the apps to make a PowerPoint presentation that I can show to the group. They will work as an individual or as a team.... residents' choice.... and have a set time (15 sec.) to answer the question on a piece of paper. The team or individual with the correct answers will be the winner(s).

While researching brain games, I found a great site from AARP for brain games that you can play on-line. I think that some of these games on this website would be easy to implement as a program for your CCRC residents. They could also be modified based upon the resident's ability level. 

You could put 20-25 words onto the screen or black board and show it to the group for a minute. Let's call this your master list. Then give each participant a piece of paper with a group of words on it and ask them to find the 5 words that were on the master list. Give them a set time to do this and time them if you want to. Repeat this with 2 or 3 pieces of paper with other words from the master list on it, until they finish the round. Show them the master list so they can grade how they've done. Or, keep it real simple for you - though harder or the player, and show them the master list and give them a set time to write down as many words as they can recall.  

The same could be done with the split words game. A little preparation ahead of time and you are all set.  Stay within a category (insects, flowers, etc.), put the parts of the words out on a table, think index cards, and ask the individuals to put together as many words as they can in a set time. Time the groups/individuals if you want.

I could go on, but I think that you get the point. Take the ideas you find on the internet and find a way to make them work for your group. Soon there will be a day when we will be asking residents to bring their tablets to the activity room and go to a designated website, where they will compete with those in the room or by themselves, but be scored against others playing in the same room.

"The root of all health is in the brain. The trunk of it is in emotion. The branches and leaves are the body. The flower of health blooms when all parts work together."

- Unknown Author

Marching into Fun

Can you believe it is March already? 2016 is well under way. The question for you today is, "how have you improved the offerings that you present to your community?" I believe that if you are not changing it up, or adding more to the calendar of events, that you are not as successful in your job as you can be - or should be for that matter. 

Being in the field of providing recreational programs is an opportunity to enhance residents' lives. If you are not doing that, it is not fair to those who you serve. There are plenty of resources available to you so that you can be awesome at your job. Today, I will share a few new ideas that I brought to my community this year. 

• Wii Jeopardy and Wii Wheel of Fortune-  I have people who are active Wii bowlers in the community, and I have residents who leave evening programs in order to get home to see Wheel of Fortune and/or Jeopardy on television. So, I found the Wii games on Amazon, and ordered them. I planned the activities at the same time, but different day of the week, as the existing Wii bowling game. I encouraged an audience, since most of us are sure we would never want to show off our lack of knowledge to those around us. 
• The games only permit 3 people to play at a time - just like on the shows, which is another reason to really push the idea of coming to be in the audience. I found both the Jeopardy and the Wheel of Fortune games to be easy to figure out. I stayed with the groups for the first few meetings to get them started, to introduce it to new comers, and to lend support when they needed it. While in the learning phase of this game, I did rotate players, so that more people could learn it. I switched people between regular Jeopardy and double Jeopardy.  The only thing that I would suggest is that for final Jeopardy, that when contestants are making their final wager, that the others turn their back or cover their eyes.... if they want to be truly competitive.  (Mine did not.) I do think that these two new calendar events are going to continue to be well attended and that some of the audience members will be contestants as well. (This has happened already.) 

• Name that Tune - I saw this game being played on a cruise ship that I was on while escorting a group recently. It seemed so simple to put together, and it was fun for me as a participant in the audience. But, I will tell you up front, that this did require more time than I thought it would o put together. There are games on-line that do what I wanted to do, but not with music from the decades that I needed. (The 20's, 30's and 40's!!) 

• I used music that I had and uploaded them to my laptop. You can also use Amazon Prime music or another online music provider, if you have that as an option. I listened to the first 10 - 15 seconds of each song. If the song said the title in it right away, it was not a good song to use. This is what took most of my time.
• I created an answer sheet and provided it to the audience members who wanted to participate. I had groups and individuals play, so the room was set up with tables as well as rows of chairs. I had mostly groups and it worked out well.
• I played the music through my auditorium sound system and "hammed it up" in between songs. I found that I need an adapter to take sound from the laptop to the microphone jack on the stage. It is not expensive and I've used it many times already. 

• 4 Pictures 1 Word - This is another game that I saw on board the ship. Just like above, it is run from your computer. There are on line games where you can get ideas from, but I have not found one that I could simply show on the screen in the Auditorium in the manner that I want to have. So, this will be (haven't finished it yet) done on PowerPoint and played using the same answer sheet from the Name that Tune game. If you are not comfortable with creating Power Point presentations, here is a link to the PowerPoint for Dummies book.  

• Coloring for Adults is all the rage right now. (Here is a good article about the benefits of adult coloring from CNN.) Some of our residents are already aware of this and are coloring on their own. I decided to add it to my calendar and see what the response was. I invited residents who were currently coloring to attend with their supplies and those who are not coloring, to attend and use my supplies. I will have this in one of our lounge areas, where it is quiet, calm and more home-like then in our activity rooms that are in our club house. I will also provide outdoor seating if the day allows for it, since this lounge faces one of our lakes. There will also be soft background music available if the participants want to hear it. 

I hope you will come back to my blog again soon to read about the results of the last two programs that I mentioned above. I also encourage you to comment below with a program or two that you have added or enhanced recently, so that we can all learn from each other. You may also leave comments on my Facebook page, Recharging Retirees, or on my Twitter page, Ideas4Seniors.

Loving my Job

It is the month of love and today I ask you, do you love your job like you use to? After being in the field of recreation with seniors for almost 30 years, I can still say yes. But, let's be truthful, I won't say that I would say yes every day of the year.

Here are some of the reasons that I still love my job. I hope that by sharing these with you that you will take the time to consider your situation and find that you have similar reasons to be glad you are an activities director.

• The appreciation of the residents
• The diversity of the day's tasks
• The experiences I've had that I might not have had otherwise
• Traveling
• Restaurants
• Cultural experiences
• Reasons to dress up, get in costumes
• etc
• Learning life lesson from worldly residents
• Does and don'ts for a good marriage
• How to treat your elderly parents
• How to be a classy woman
• The value of faith
• Strength in difficult times
• etc.
• Professional growing opportunities through a great company
• The opportunity to bring happiness to the residents and their families

Happy Valentine's Day to you! I hope that as you decorate your community you will stop and smell the roses around you and find that love is in the air.