Alzheimer’s and Special Days: Worth the Effort

Our calendars are filled with special observances and events that sometimes get overlooked.  These special days are different from holidays which usually get all the attention.  I’m talking about days that pay tribute to such things as civic observances, historical or religious events, famous people or places or milestones that were set, worthwhile causes, or just -for-fun-occasions. For instance, did you know that May 15 is National Chocolate Chip Day?  That appeals more to me than May 13 which is Frog Jumping Day or May 16 which is National Sea Monkey Day.  Now, I’m all for frogs and sea monkeys, but chocolate rings a special bell with me and it just happens to be a favorite of our friend with Alzheimer’s dementia.  So that’s on the schedule for us to celebrate. When trying to come up with an idea for what to do when you visit a friend or loved one with any type of dementia,  just look at your typical calendar for inspiration.  You’ll find all sorts of events worth celebrating with a themed project that can be assembled during your visit.  Coming events we will celebrate with a project reflecting that special day are Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Father’s Day and the first day of Summer. Did I mention Chocolate Chip Day????  You can see what’s on my mind. At our Lady-Links visits, we’ve used special days to inspire activities and projects by decorating  pumpkins for the first day of Fall, decorating masks and hats for Mardi Gras, making cards for St. Patrick’s Day and the first day of Spring, and making flower arrangements to be used for Veteran’s Day, just to name a few.   Remember, we’re not talking about major holidays.  We’ve done tons of stuff for those.  We’re looking for those obscure (and some not so obscure) special days as inspiration for projects to do at our twice weekly visits that will keep our friend actively engaged and help her to maintain her social, emotional/spiritual, and intellectual links. We don’t want to be boring.  So far, we’ve been successful! Just recently at some of our Lady-Links visits, we prepared for one of those special days, Earth Day, with our friend by making bookmarks and cards with “conservation” and “appreciate Earth” themes. Since we want our friend to be involved as much as possible in our projects, we design them with her skills and abilities in mind.  She doesn’t handle glue very well, but she loves to peel and place stickers.  My daughter-in-law suggested that I purchase a Creative Station machine to make my own stickers and I love it.  We are able to design and print stickers that our friend can relate to and that work well with our project theme.   We used one sticker design for our bookmark, that of Earth.  We printed a Bible verse relating to the Earth on green card stock, and brought that to our Lady-Link visit for her to peel and place the Earth sticker on it. For our Earth Day themed card, I found a great source for pictures on my daughter-in-law’s blog, Carrie Elle using a link she had to Play 2 Learn with Sarah which featured an Earth Day Bingo game.  The pictures were just what I wanted but the Bingo game had too many squares for our friend to be able to play it.  Although I didn’t use it for its intended purpose,  I downloaded it, printed the Bingo cards, and cut up the squares to use to make stickers for our Earth Day encouragement cards that we shared with other residents in our senior community. It worked wonderfully!  I printed our Earth Day verse on green card stock, folded it and had it ready for our friend to place the stickers on it. I organized the cards and the stickers in baggies, and gave to each person at our Lady-Link visit that day.  All the supplies for making one card were complete within each baggie. We had a great conversation with our friend during our Earth Day themed visits and she was able to join in with a few comments of her own.  She remembers her parents telling her to turn out the lights as she would leave a room and she remembers that they would reuse aluminum foil more than once.  We talked about conservation efforts including recycling and reusing things (our senior community takes this very seriously and has a great recycling effort).   We were so pleased that she understood the purpose of Earth Day and could relate to it, at least at that moment.  Our activities linked to something in her past that was important to her and gave her the opportunity to participate fully. The cards and bookmarks were given to our community chaplain who distributed them to those residents who attended vespers since they had an appropriate and relevant Bible verse on them. Not only did our Earth Day projects serve a purpose for our friend and the residents who received them, but we Lady-Links benefited from the conversation they promoted as we shared ways of recycling, reusing, and restoring our natural resources.  It was totally worth the effort, and we look forward to the next special day that we can celebrate with a themed project!

What special days are coming up that you plan to celebrate?  Any suggestions for us to use with our friend at one of our Lady-Links visits?