Help your residents celebrate the Chinese New Year on January 29 in your facility by providing fun crafts and activities that relate to the 2025 zodiac – the snake. Add a few of these ideas to help you and your residents enjoy the lunar year:
Making Lanterns
Provide residents with paper lanterns that they can decorate for the Chinese New Year. Supply residents with red markers and glitter to decorate the lanterns. In fact, help residents add a bit of sparkle to the lanterns using adhesive gemstones or even iridescent gems.
Once the lanterns have been decorated, hang them throughout your facility alongside Chinese New Year decorations.
Decorating Snakes
Assist residents with getting over any fears of snakes that they may have as you recruit them to help you decorate wooden snakes that actually wiggle with just a flick of your wrist. Provide residents with the kit’s paint to decorate their snakes by painting their snake in a solid background color before adding fun details with other paint colors. Once the snakes have been decorated, host a Wooden Snake Contest, and ask your facility’s administrators to judge the best decorated snake. Be sure to create a Chinese New Year goody bag of chocolate coins to award the winner.
Once the contest is over, encourage residents to donate their snakes to a local elementary school class or to gift to a grandchild.
Playing Snakes and Ladders
Set out several Snakes and Ladders board games throughout your facility, and encourage passersby to stop and play the fun game. Simply set up small playing areas (a small table and two chairs) throughout your facility for residents and even staff members to play a quick game.
If you have lots of residents who enjoy playing board games, then host a fun Snakes and Ladders Tournament for your residents in your Activity Room. Place a game at each of the tables, and pair residents together to play against one another. Then have the winners of those games play one another. Keep having the winners play one another until there is just one player left – your 2024 Snakes and Ladders Tournament Champion.
Making Garden Bugs
Invite residents to help you get a head start on your spring garden by helping you create garden bug mosaics, that include garden bugs, butterflies, and snakes. Assist residents with gluing the tiles to the bugs before grouting with the kit’s mortar. Once dry, save the mosaics to add to your facility’s outdoor garden this spring.
Assembling Dragons
A Chinese New Year celebration is not complete without recognizing the iconic character that we all associate with the Chinese New Year – the dragon. As an activity, assist residents with decorating chipboard dragons that can be donated as a fun gift to a local elementary school class. For the activity, first have residents assemble the dragons by punching out the pieces before affixing them with the kit’s paper brads. Then have residents use paint and paint markers to decorate the dragons.
Once the dragons have been assembled, arrange to drop off the finished dragons as gifts to a local elementary school class. (Consider adopting a local elementary school class, where your residents can make crafts to donate to the class throughout the year. Just be sure to make enough dragons so that each student gets one.)
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!
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