Help your residents enjoy the season by getting their hands dirty in your facility’s garden. To get more participants, be sure to provide a variety of garden activities that will appeal to the different interests of your senior residents, including those who love planting in the garden or those who love painting gardens.
For Residents With Green Thumbs:
Set up several fun planting activities for residents. For instance, invite residents to help you use garden tools to place plants from your local nursery directly into the ground. If an actual garden area is not an option in your facility, then get creative by having residents help you plant using a garden wall by placing plants in anchored pots along a wall in your facility.
In addition, appeal to those residents who gardening from seeds by supplying them with zinnia garden seeds to plant in pots. If needed, use a table top gardener to help residents add soil to the pots that come with the zinnia garden seed kit. If you have an abundance of flower seeds, then use extra terra cotta pots for planting.
Don’t forget about your herb lovers! Use an easy-to-plant herb garden craft kit so that residents can grow their favorite herbs right on their windowsill.
For Residents Who Enjoy Painting:
Encourage your residents who like to paint to get involved in your gardening activities by helping you prepare art that can be displayed in the garden or throughout your facility. For example, supply residents with garden gnomes to decorate with acrylic paint. In contrast, supply residents with aqua paintings to reveal beautiful garden pictures using just water and a paintbrush.
For Residents Who Love Art:
If you have residents who love arts and crafts, then coordinate fun sessions that allow residents to assemble fun projects that they can keep in their room. One such project includes photo frames that residents can decorate before adding a photo of their grandchild. Another project involves using tiles to create mosaic garden art that can be added to create interest in the garden.
Finally, consider using sand art as a way for residents to create beautiful garden pictures by adding colorful sand to the adhesive garden designs.
For Residents Who Like Tactile Activities:
Even if your residents don’t like getting their hands dirty, you can still provide fun tactile garden activities for them. For instance, use garden lacing cards for residents to string colorful laces in and out of the holes on the cards that contain pictures of gardens. Additionally, provide coloring pages of pretty wildflowers that residents can decorate with crayons, colored pencils, or markers.
Other tactile activities include assembling an air garden (a plastic hanging garden that residents can decorate before adding in sand, seashells, and feathers), completing a jigsaw puzzle, or assembling a butterfly garden to hang in your facility.
Find more ideas from Notjustbingo on the S&S blog here.
About Not Just Bingo:
Not Just Bingo is an online resource of fun, senior activity ideas for activity professionals of assisted living facilities. They have been providing fun activity ideas online since 2009, and continue to assist activity professionals across the country by creating meaningful and engaging activity ideas for their residents that go “beyond bingo.” Not Just Bingo feels privileged to help activity directors better the living experiences of their residents while demonstrating that a senior’s quality of life can actually improve when they move to a senior facility!
Want even more ideas each month? Visit www.notjustbingo.com for how-to activity ideas, monthly newsletters, and daily holiday ideas. You can also sign up for the Notjustbingo Membership to receive specialized activity ideas to keep your residents and staff engaged, active, and having fun!
