This Insidious Dementia
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If you’re looking for some Valentine Activities for Dementia, I’ve got some for you. Ideas if you’re an at-home caregiver and if you’re working as a well-being coordinator or an activity director.
Valentine Decorations
What comes to your mind when you think Valentines? Big red hearts. That’s what comes to my mind. I would get some big sheets of construction paper in shades of red, pink and white, and have your residents either trace and cut out hearts or cut out hearts that you’ve already traced for them.
As well as varying the colors of the hearts, I would vary the sizes too.
Then, depending upon the capability of your memory care residents, you can get them involved in the decorating by deciding where the hearts should be taped on the wall.
A Valentine’s Day banner could be a decoration as well, like this one below in my Etsy shop, DementiaHelpingHand. Some nice features about this product is that the letters are large enough for residents to cut out, there’s variety so they can make choices and they are using their small motor skills cutting and glueing letters onto the banner pieces.
If you don’t want a banner out in a common area, then the banner can be created to go over the doorway to each person’s room.
Valentine activities for the at-home caregiver
The paper chain ideas described above could be activities you could do at home with your loved one. There’s always coloring pages.
Find some heart stickers at a dollar store or Hobby Lobby. Draw a big heart on a piece of paper and have your loved one fill in the heart with the stickers.
You could probably find a package of pre-cut hearts in the stores. (Teacher supply stores are good for these kind of materials.) Use these hearts for making designs. Or for sorting if they come in different sizes and colors.
There’s always the packages of those chalky candy hearts. Those are great to sort. You can sort by color and possibly expression. If you want to extend it a little further, have them graph the colors to see which color group has the most.
If you can’t make it to the store or you want something quick, I’ve got this product below. Print and cut, then use those hearts for sorting.
Here are a couple other products in my Etsy store that might be of use for you –
If you’re looking for something memorable that could be kept as a keepsake, I’ve got this one below. You need paint as you’ll be using your loved one’s handprint to go with a poem and a handful of forget-me-nots.
Small Group Activities
Referring back to the ideas above about the paper chains, this is probably an activity where you’d want to do it with a small group to keep it manageable.
If you have the ability to bake in your memory care facility, try getting your residents involved in helping you get cookie dough mixed up or putting dough into muffin trays. Can they use cookie cutters and help make heart shaped sugar cookies then decorate them?
You can find 2 products in my Etsy store, DementiaHelpingHand, that would work for small groups. They are –
If you don’t have the ability to bake/cook in your facility you can use play-doh. Residents can roll out the play-doh and use cookie cutters to “cut” shapes out. Watch to see that no one eats the play-do so be careful to use edible play-doh recipes.
music
There’s so many good love songs across the eras. Since people with Alzheimer’s react so well to music, you might want to have music playing in the background while the residents are participating in these activities.
They might also enjoy this Valentine themed Finish the Lyrics game where you start a line from the tune and residents are to continue the lyric for you.
large group valentine activities
Bingo is a game that you can play with a larger group. You can find this game (below) in my Etsy shop as well.
You could do some kind of passing game with some object that is holiday related and music in the background. Or using pool noodles to bat around pink and red balloons.
In my Etsy shop, you can also find –
Valentine Riddles
Valentine Jokes
5 Second Valentines Day game
If you’re still looking for more ideas, you can find a lot by looking at activities for younger grade levels then adjusting the activity to ability levels of the residents.