Recharging Retirees in Retirement Communities

Fitness is a big part of any activities calendar in a retirement community. Fitness programs can, and should, appear with many different titles and be held in many different locations, but the main element is that residents get moving! One of the activities that we have done on an annual basis for the past eight years is called a Poker Walk. It was derived from an annual motorcycle fund raiser event that takes place in our area's greater community. It is a program that is simple to put together and fun for the residents. First, plan your route for your walkers. Ours is just about a mile long and circles our campus. Then plan where your five stations will be and place a table and chair or two at each location, along with a deck of playing cards and a cooler with small individual bottles of water in in. Large print cards work better if you have them, but it is not necessary. You will need to create a grid that has a five rows (one for each statio...

Have you eaten your Wheaties? Are you ready for the holiday season? I've been out shopping and getting ready to decorate our community for Christmas and Hanukkah. I will have the day off after Thanksgiving, so I will start on Monday. I was wondering if you, as the activities director of your community, are the responsible person for the decorations. Do you have volunteers, staff members, residents, or an outside company help you?  In my retirement community, the maintenance department does all of our outside lights and they help me get the artificial trees up. This year we will be buying a live tree for our lobby, since it is newly renovated and we thought that it would be a nice change. I do have managers that like to help also, so they help me decorate the trees. We have a tree in the lobby, as I mentioned, plus one in our casual dining area, one in the auditorium, and one in the main dining room. We also have a card tree where residents tie on their greeting ca...

Ralph Waldo Emerson   said " It is not length of life, but depth of life." As activities directors for independent living senior adults, this is a quote that I feel could be painted on our office walls! It reminds us of the importance of having a meaningful program for our residents. It would also serve the residents well to see this quote to remind them to live each day to its fullest and with meaning! I have shared some ideas with you on this blog that are fun, but this time, I want to speak about something that may or may not be considered an "activity" that you can list on your calendar. It may even fall under the culinary department in your community, instead of the activities department, but I'm still going to share it with you because I've seen the success of it at my community. It is simply a time and a place in your community where coffee is available to residents and their guests to have for free. And yes, you as the activities director...