Recharging Retirees in Retirement Communities

Seems like we have been taking our residents to the movie theater more lately because of the great selection of movies that are available. They've enjoyed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel , The Queen, The King's Speech , and more in the theater. As activities director's this sounds like an easy outing to plan, but it usually is not. We like to plan programs in advance and put them onto our calendars with a specific date and time..... and they should be accurate, of course. But with most theaters, they do not announce their show times until the middle of the week for the upcoming week. Because of this, most of the announcements that I put out to sell a moving outing are an addition to the calendar, promoted usually with "time to be announced," and then followed up by phone calls to those signed up to tell them the correct bus departure time. It is more work than the average outing.   As an activities director, you can tell by the previews when somethi...

Seniors going Gangnam Style  makes the news because of the trendy moves they are doing in their retirement community! I love it when the world gets to see that seniors are not all sitting in their rocking chairs knitting! This week at my community, we had our annual holiday gala dance. I had received a call from my entertainer for the night saying that he was sick and was sending someone else in his place. My thoughts went from "oh crap" to "oh yea" to "uh oh." The fear of the unknown performer on one of the most popular high-end events of the year! Well, turns out that I learned two lessons this week when preparing for the event. The first thing that I learned is, that if you have a good working relationship with a professional entertainer, he will take good care of you, even if he is not there. I had an entertainer cancel earlier in the month, but he did not find a replacement for himself and left me with nothing. The difference that I can s...

January is National Eye Month and as the Activities Director in an independent living retirement community, I  like to draw attention to it due to the fact that there are residents living in our community with eye issues.  Yes, we can recognize each month's health focus and that might come across as "not real fun activities," so pick and choose the ones that will work in your community and then make it great.  For National Eye Month, there are a few different programs that will benefit your community and they are: Invite a local area's eye doctor to come give a lecture to your residents about eye care/eye health Ask an organization like The American Foundation for the Blind  to provide a speaker who would come to the community and share the tools that can help low-vision residents with their daily living tasks. See the  Resources for Activities Directors  for some low vision game aids that will help your residents stay "in the game." Provide a b...

The senior adults living in my retirement community are using electronics to stay in touch with their families and their friends more and more these days. Even one of our active 100+ resident understands how amazing the Internet is. She was interviewed this election year and saw and heard herself immediately on-line - as did her family when the links were shared. Residents are using their home computers,their laptops, Kindles, and smartphones to stay connected without having to travel to visit. They are using Skype and Facebook and having a great time. I found a very good article about seniors using Facebook . It addresses the long term health and social benefits of staying connected. This article also shares another cool aspect..... the inter-generational connection that can be created with high school seniors working with senior adults. I found this video showing seniors attending a workshop about Facebook . I'm sharing it so that you can see the value of Facebook to...