When planning fun activities for your activity program at your nursing facility or recreation center, be sure to take advantage of some of these FREE resources in your community, thanks to our friends at notjustbingo.com.

1. Local Schools. Contact your local school’s guidance counselor to recruit student volunteers for your activity program. In addition, let the school’s choir director or music teacher know that you are interested in having them perform at your facility as well as having your residents or participants attend the free dress rehearsals at their school.
2. Churches and Synagogues. Schedule visits from your community’s pastors, priests, and rabbis to officiate religious services at your facility. Additionally, consider scheduling a quarterly interfaith brunch at your facility for the religious leaders to eat and socialize with members of your community.
3. Funeral Homes. Contact the funeral homes in your area to let them know that your facility will accept donated flowers – whenever mourners have an excess of flowers that they cannot keep. Use the flowers for decoration throughout your facility or to start a Flower Club, in which members of the club create flower arrangements.
4. Local Colleges. Recruit local college or university music majors to gain performance experience by performing at your facility. In fact, schedule a few of these music students to play their mobile instruments during room visits for your bedridden residents.
5. Public Library. Coordinate with your local public library to mail a box of books to your facility for your residents and participants to read. Set up the service so that the library sends you a new box of books each month. (Instead of requiring you to physically return the borrowed library books, some public library systems will allow you to mail back the borrowed books at no cost to you.)
6. State Government. Find out if your state offers audio books for your blind or low-vision residents or participants. If so, the government will also provide them with the free audio equipment for them to use to listen to the books.
7. County Government. Reach out to your county’s historical department to schedule your county’s historian to give interesting history lectures at your facility.

 

About notjustbingo.com

notjustbingo.com is an online resource of fun, senior activity ideas for activity professionals of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. They have been providing fun activity ideas online since 2009, and we continue to assist activity professionals across the country by creating meaningful and engaging activity ideas for their residents that go “beyond bingo.” Don’t get them wrong – bingo is fun, but we want to spread the word that there is more to life than just bingo. Overall, notjustbingo.com feels privilege 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 nursing facility.