suggestive activities for elderly with dementia?

Question

to keep people occupied within a care home

Answer 1

Giving a person with dementia any task can be nearly immposible (My grandmother had it). Your going to want to give them something to do that dosent ivolve too much concentration or that needs too much attention. We gave my grandmother a doll and told her to take care of it. That worked well. Also we just talked to her as much as we could to try and keep her mind stimulated.

I hope this helped a little!! Good luck!

Answer 2

Nothing beats playing them the oldies and at 83 I know them all.
A good keyboard played for an hour every other day will give them a mental lift and more so if played after a glass of sherry with their evening meal.
To find someone local contact organ clubs.
Write me if you want more help.
Get them together for an hour on the day before to discuss the repertoire. It doesn't matter if the player can't play it, but it will give them another task.
Now responsible for the entertainment you will find the normals joining in and the spin off will be beneficial for everyone.
Before you know it they will be offering you help.
The cost? Petrol and the sherry in most cases.

Answer 3

lots of music dancing art activities uplifting happy films like musicals and most of all TAKE THEM OUT if they are stuck indoors they will become cut off from the outside world even just a walk to the park can keep people happy by seeing birds in the trees etc I look after several people with dementia and I swear their main problem is lack of fresh air. You will never cure them but you can keep them happy which will improve their minds. Lots of conversation and listening to them helps too.

Answer 4

"Suggestive Activities ??" Perhaps Suggest Activities would be better ?

Alternatively contact your local Alzheimer Society through http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/ who will be able to help you. If you are in the USA I am sure there is an equivalent organization who would be also able to help.
Local or personal photographs, and music which was popular in their youth might also be a good idea.See whether your local school is interested in adopting the care home as the young and the old often can help each other. .

Answer 5

Mental practice is as important for improving concentration, reaction time, and overall performance; as practicing a skill improves physical performance.These activities all will improve these areas:

Word games and flash cards (found in the education section of most good book stores) train your clients to focus on a task, as well as retrieve information stored in long-term memory and different centers of the brain.

Turn the sound off the TV. Make a game of using the emotions and personalities of the characters to make up the dialog or plot.

Ping-pong, tennis, video games, skeet shooting, and arcade games challenge brain and body response times to unexpected occurrences.

Encourage the participants to keep a journal of the day’s activities, dreams, and past events. This adds volumes of data to the memory stores.

Bingo improves rapid hand-eye coordination, visual skills, and memory.

Trivia games, card games, crossword puzzles, computer programs stimulate stores of knowledge, language, and problem-solving skills.

Try activities that require coordination: jump rope, walk backwards, juggle, or build a house of cards.

Practice gymnastic moves like handstands or cartwheels. Try doing similar moves in a swimming pool.

The simple act of spinning around on one foot or swimming underwater stimulates neural activity.

Solve three-dimensional puzzles, sketch real life situations or three-dimensional objects.

Learn to read a map, read upside down, or play a musical instrument.

Try to fix or identify the problem in a small broken appliance or gadget.

Do math by hand; then check answers with a calculator.

Expand language skills; provide a new "word-of-the-day" for them to learn and use.

Encourage residents to reconstruct recent conversations or memorize a poem.

Learn stretching exercises for even the smallest muscles.

Listen to a new kind of music.

Answer 6

Mastermind

Answer 7

I'm sure you don't mean suggestive activities. That would be perverse ... particularly if the clients/residents are in advanced stages, and not able to tell you where to get off.

Seriously though, some of the things that I used to find useful were: Reminscence therapy, where you show photographs of famous people from years gone by. Ask your clients/residents if they recognise the person in question, then ask them what they were famous for. You can include sounds that may have been heard from your clients' younger days. i.e. air raid sirens, radio broadcasts, etc. Be aware though that this may raise emotions that you wouldn't normally be expecting.

You could ask your clients about the town/village/city where they used to live. Ask them what it was like growing up there, if they can remember the shops they used to shop at, what they used to buy, how much it cost. You could obviously go into more detail about preparation of food, the work they used to do, what it involved, how long they worked there, what they used to do in their free time.

I don't know whether you already take your clients/residents on shopping trips, but I believe it's a way of keeping them in touch with what goes on around them. Obviously, you'd only be able to manage one or two clients at a time ... and maybe, depending on the stage of dementia, it might need to be on a one-to-one basis.

Are you able to take your clients/residents out to the local park? You may be surprised at how gratifying this can be for both client and carer. Maybe sitting on a swing, just watching youngsters, can give them a sense of what it was like when they, themselves, were youngsters.

Some of your male clients may enjoy a trip to the local pub. (Elderly women, in my experience, tended to see pubs as the man's domain ... not a place for women to be seen.)

If you have the room, set up an art room, where you can get clients/residents to draw, paint and mould clay. This would, obviously, need the home to provide working materials. You may even be able to get a local art group to send someone along that would be able to encourage your clients/residents to take part. We were lucky in that we had a local group that provided someone free of charge. All that we had to pay for was materials used.

As you, no doubt, already appreciate, dementing clients/residents tend to respond quite well to music. My advice would be to have a separate room, away from the main lounge, where this could take place. There are many 'old time' tapes that can be purchased for this purpose. As well as clients/residents joining in with the singing, you may be lucky enough to get a few of them dancing.

Another way to get clients/residents involved with the music is to incorporate some activity in the sessions ... similar to a keep fit session. Include bean bags, balloons, ropes ... anything to get the clients/residents mobile. Of course, you may need some guidance from a physiotherapist as to what would be suitable exercise. You can't expect aged clients/residents to be as mobile as they were years ago.

Whatever you decide to do with your clients/residents, I would advise that you ask them if they wish to participate. I don't believe that anyone should be 'forced' into doing anything that they don't wish to participate in. Some clients/residents may feel embarrassed or apprehensive about 'showing themself up' in front of others, just as we might do ourselves.

Take things slowly ... at the clients'/residents' pace and inform them weeks before it all actually starts, and keep reminding them. The idea, here, is to attempt to get something to remain in their short-term memory that something 'special' is going to happen.

I'm not sure how much the officers of the home where you work are in support of what you're trying to achieve, but they could, at least, source things for you. If they have a training section, for instance, they may be able to 'loan' sets that are used for Reality Orientation and Reminscence. Speaking of which, do you have a reality orientation board? One where the current day, date, year, weather, season, etc. is diplayed? If not, this is something that can be made rather cheaply. You could use card to make numbers, day names, season names, etc. This could be one of the first sessions for youto put your art group to task with. lol.

Sorry I've made my response so long. I wish you the very best of luck with your endeavours.

Answer 8

simple crosswords; reading /as long as possible
walks wherever safe nearby with carers
simple board games
it depends on the stage/level they are at.
you need to know what level they have been assessed at and plan appropriately.

Answer 9

draughts?

scrabble maybe. might help them.

not really sure but i wasnt gonna say something as ridiculous as mastermind. :p

colour by numbers maybe.

wordsearch, the easy ones.