So, I'm running out of things to talk about myself! And my experience with cancer, i know I could write about all the icky things I went through, or the bodily changes I experienced, or write about each treatment from my diary I kept back then, but as no one has asked any questions, I'm gonna leave that a mystery for now!
Instead, I'm going to continue writing about different art projects and activities I do, as well as update about projects I do as a life enrichment specialist, aka art therapist, with my residents at work! For hipaa / confidentiality concerns, I will not include photos, or names of my residents, but, just cropped photos of the activity.
Feel free to use my ideas, as I have recieved them from Pinterest! And will try to include all the links along with my adapted activity. While I went to school to be an art therapist, I did learn about different activities, mostly how to adapt activities to the required population, and thinking outside the box to create our own activities. ( we were told it was perfectly acceptable to take other ideas, and adapt them as needed). We learned much more but in this case, a life enrichment position with dementia is wonderful! I'm absolutely loving my job, and my residents are so sweet, and always trying new things! They like hands on activities, music, the outdoors, and bingo, and Yahtzee! I'm trying to bring in a large variety of entertainers, so if any of y'all are south eastern wi and have aTalent to share, please private message me or comment with your email!!!!
Being a life enrichment assistant, I get to plan activities, including arts and crafts, outtings, parties, volunteer programs, a little bit of everything! Quite overwhelming but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it, but there's still something new every day. I was told the first year is the hardest in this position. For my group, I try to plan movement based activities twice a week, such as tossing a beach all back and forth to stretch and work our muscles, get the blood pumping and reminisce to relive stress! We have chair yoga volunteer on Tuesdays, and Wednesday is arts and crafts day! We have decorated the kitchen calendar wAll with colored leaf drawings, tissue paper pumpkins and masquerade masks for our upcoming Halloween party. Pumpkins were donated By a local business, and the residents painted one side, and used foam stickers to put fun faces on the other! We also have had bingo about every other day, and started doing Yahtzee in between. We've also done ring toss, pumpkin bowling, and pumpkin Yahtzee! Our place is full of Halloween now thanks to the residents hard work, and my coworkers setting up the outside decorations. Some entertainers we have had are, crafty paws custom design cards, banjo bob, a guitar harmonica player, with more to come! Even though I've only been working a month, I feel like it's been forever, I have accomplished so much here! My goal by xmas is to bring in more volunteers :). Pictures and descriptions will come soon,promise!
