This Insidious Dementia
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Are you looking for some winter activities for people with dementia? If so, I have some ideas for you.
Winter can be a challenging season for individuals living with dementia as well as for the caregivers. Shorter days, colder weather, and fewer opportunities to go outside can lead to boredom or restlessness.
The good news is that simple, thoughtfully designed winter activities can help provide structure, comfort, and moments of connection—whether at home or in a memory care setting.
winter matching activities
Activities that involve matching objects together are good ones to use with people that have dementia or mild cognitive impairment.
Matching activities are good for maintaining visual recognition. It’s familiar as well as fairly routine.
This kind of an activity could be played together with your loved one or set up the game and let your person play on their own.
These are games you can create yourself such as using pictures from magazines. You can have your person match types of clothing to kinds of weather. Match clothing pieces to each other. Match a picture to the corresponding word.
Winter-themed matching activities are especially helpful because the images are familiar and seasonal. Items like mittens, scarves, boots, and snowflakes often trigger recognition—even when language skills are declining.
You can check out the matching activities below that I have in my Etsy shop, DementiaHelpingHand.
Once you print out the set of matching items, I would suggest you laminate them. (If you don’t have access to a laminating machine – you can use clear shelf lining paper.) Then store them in a Ziploc baggy.
If your loved one is anxious this might be a good activity to settle them down or relax them, especially if you can get them to talking about the familiar objects.
small group winter activities
Small group (2-5 residents) activities provide a good opportuntity for using language and conversational skills. Not to mention small motor skills, number and shape recognition.
This could be a good time to talk about familiar objects and ask those reminiscing questions. Hold up a picture of a winter hat or several different hats, or an actual hat, and ask the residents if they used to wear a hat like that when they were young. Prompt them to describe the hat. Do the same with gloves/mittens/scarves.
I have these 3 products below, in my Etsy shop, that can be used in a small group setting in a memory care facility. Build a Snowman and Roll the Dice are games to use with dice and the other is having the residents use dot markers on seasonal pages.
large group winter activities
I have three products below that kinda fit this category. Winter Riddles, Jokes and Bingo.
All three are basically call and response. Residents that are non-verbal can still play Bingo as long as they know what each object is and can place their “token” to cover an image.
Riddles and jokes are more call and response type activities. Good to get the residents talking and responding. An activity like this should generate some amusing answers.
Trivia would be a good game to use as well. So would something like hold up a picture of a familiar object and ask the residents to name it. Or maybe switch the directions and say, “Hold up your hands if you think this is a XX.”
language based winter activities
If you want additional ideas and activities that are seasonal related, you might be interested in the product below. It is more language based and ties into memories, music and poetry.
You can read more about that product in this post titled Memory Care Seasonal Activities.
If you’re looking for ready-to-use winter activities designed specifically for individuals living with dementia, you can find my full collection of winter-themed printables in my Etsy shop. Each product was created with simplicity, dignity, and flexibility in mind—based on my own experience as a caregiver.