While making an activity plan for seniors to keep them physically and mentally active, do keep craft ideas in mind. Crafting helps seniors boost their fine motor skills and also allows them to enhance their mental strength. Experts say that crafting can keep anxiety and depression at bay and protect the brain from damage caused by ageing.
To help you with activity plan, we have rounded up 5 wonderful craft ideas for seniors that will help them spend their time creatively:
- Origami: Paper is a versatile thing to work with. Flowers, gift boxes, and boats, these are some of the few things seniors at your care home can make by folding papers. Seniors can work with papers of different sizes, textures and colours. Origami helps seniors improve hand-eye coordination and motor skills. It also enhances mindfulness and relieves stress.
- Handmade festive cards: Holidays can be an emotionally rough time for seniors living in care homes. But nobody is ever too old to give or receive a handmade greeting card. You can encourage seniors at your care homes to make festive handmade cards. They can post them to their family and friends. They can also exchange cards with other residents. You can also use printables for those who wish to colour but not draw. Give them craft paper and see the magic happen.
- Pot painting: Painting not just improves motor skills but it also fosters mental well-being. Painting different pots can be fun and help seniors full their day creatively. You can let the seniors paint the pots and decorate them with ribbons, glitter and stones. After they are done, these pots can be decorated in their room or throughout the facility. This would give them a sense of accomplishment as well as belonging.
- Quilting a blanket: Quilting is like maths but only the difference is that it is fun. The activity lets seniors use their creative and analytical skills as seniors have to do a lot of activities – from choosing the fabric, colours, and patterns to quilting. It helps to improve their dexterity and hand-eye coordination. Quilting may seem like a solitary activity, but when done in groups it can help seniors to make friends and socialise. It can bring a sense of purpose to the daily life of seniors.
- Pottery: If you are looking for a stress-relieving activity for seniors, give pottery a go. The very experience of creating something with their hands can give seniors immense joy. Pottery will not only help them create a ceramic gift, but the sensory stimulation will also affect their health positively. Expressive art activities help seniors in socialisation and keeping anxiety and depression at bay.
Caregivers can encourage residents by taking into consideration their personal preferences. They can also ask residents to work in groups so that those who are not very keen will feel less hesitant. Getting a volunteer to help residents with craft activities can work wonders. To help caregivers focus on person-centred care, care homes in the UK are shifting to electronic MAR. The software automates the medical administration and eliminates the need to manually maintain the records. This will only improve the operational efficiency of medical administration but save caregiver’s time. To know how eMAR can help your care home, book a demo.
