Dementia and Making Valentines: Tips for A Successful Project

Exchanging valentines is a great way to let friends know that you care about them.  For the past two years, Lady-Links visits in late January and early February have included making our own special valentines to share with our neighbors in the retirement community where we live.  We’ve created a variety of encouraging messages  and designs to our decorated hearts and cards and all have been enthusiastically received.

Valentine red hearts

 

We added a jeweled valentine to our group of favorites this year, inserted a ribbon of heart designs and made it a door hanger.

Valentine jewels blue cropped

We always include a set of valentines with scripture that are distributed at our Vespers service.

Love Scripture Hearts

 

Working with so many designs can be confusing for our friends with dementia, so we work on one project at a time, complete it and put it away before we begin the next.  Of course, there is plenty of prep work that is done before each visit so that it ready to be assembled.

Valentine parts

The valentines with the jewels are packaged in individual kits that we purchased from Oriental Trading Company.  All the pieces are stickers, including the jewels.  However, the small jewels were hard to peel and stick, so we added those before the visit, leaving only large pieces for our friend with dementia to assemble.Valentine jewels on pink cropped

We also added the ribbon before the visit because that was a little difficult to tie.  The assembly of these valentines went very smoothly because of our prep work and they look great hanging on the residents’ doors.

 

 

 

With all of our valentine projects, we package all the pieces for one valentine together in a baggie.  That way, everything is ready for assembly.

Valentines in baggies

 

We use stickers rather than glue whenever possible because managing the glue container and distributing the correct amount can be hard for our friends with dementia.  If something has to be glued, we do that in our advance prep work before the visit.

Valentine stickers from store

If we can’t find a sticker that fits our design, we use our Creative Station Sticker Machine to make exactly what we want, such as the scripture hearts.

Valentine sticker machine

Our friends with dementia had a wonderful time during these past few weeks as we made the valentines.  Much of the success of the project was because we selected an activity that was meaningful to our friends since it brought back such lovely childhood memories,  and it mattered to them today because they knew the valentines we made were to be given to those who needed a touch of encouragement in their lives.  The prep work we did ahead of the visit provided a stress-free activity that was filled with lots of laughter and love.

Valentine card showing scripture

Did you do any special valentine activities with your friend or loved one who has dementia?  We’d love to hear about it!

 

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