Recruit your residents to help transform your facility into a beautiful autumn environment that is ready for all your Thanksgiving festivities. To make sure that your facility is ready, be sure to include a few of the following items:
Beautiful Napkin Rings
When you think of Thanksgiving, you probably think of holiday dinner with beautiful linens, centerpieces, and of course, napkin rings. Invite your residents to help you create autumn-themed napkin rings for your upcoming festivities by using faux autumn leaves. For the activity, simply cut the string in between the leaves and use the string to tie each leaf around craft wire that has been shaped as a napkin ring (i.e., in a circle).
Painted Pumpkins
If your facility has real or fake pumpkins and gourds around your facility, then have residents paint them in the fun rich autumn colors of burgundy, brown, and orange. Then place the painted pumpkins outdoors on your facility’s front porch to welcome visitors.
A Cornucopia
The “horn of plenty” is associated with Thanksgiving, so why not have residents color autumn-themed coloring pages, which may feature a cornucopia or other Thanksgiving-related image, with markers before framing the pictures and hanging them throughout the facility for the holiday.
Indoor Wreaths
Invite residents to decorate the walls in your facility as well as their room doors with indoor wreaths, like a wooden craft stick wreath that can be painted in fall colors or even a flower wreath that can be decorated with autumn-colored markers.
Natural Centerpieces
Encourage residents to help you bring nature indoors to create natural centerpieces for your Thanksgiving tables. Simply make natural arrangements on the tables using natural pine cones and harvest baskets.
Turkeys
You can’t forget about the turkeys! Be sure to have residents assemble wooden turkeys that can be painted and placed throughout your facility for the holiday.
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!
