SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITIES - MORE FUN THAN YOU THINK!

Brain Fitness classes took an interesting turn as we moved into Senior Living facilities.  The classes are larger, giving me the challenge to find activities that benefit a large group, as many as 18 at a time.  The sessions are ongoing as opposed to running an 8-week cycle as we've done at PCC and community centers.  The residents are ready and eager to exercise their brains with the very real hope of improving memory and processing cognitive skills.

Among the many activities we've added, we have an activity to practice skills to recall names.  We use 8x10" pictures of various people with interesting names and histories.  Identifying a name with a face is the first step in later recalling the name of someone you meet.  For instance, Joe is an on-screen news reporter.  We always start by shaking hands with the face in the picture and saying our names.  Eye-to-eye contact is important.  Joe is quite handsome with a tanned face.  Someone suggested he looked like a "cup of Joe".  Sure enough, they were able to recall his name a week later.   Another face that could only be described as a bit of a character with glasses set on the tip of his nose and a beret, was Larry.  Looney Larry they named him.  A little more effort went into recalling his name but they did remember that he played bit parts in the local theater in his spare time.

Other activities include memory retrieval from a random list of words, mnemonics to remember lists, the Loci method to plan a Clown Wedding, and various processing activities that include yelling "quack", and "goal", and "far out"!

They love it, it's fun and gets the job done at the same time.  Sometimes they are "brain tired" at the end of our hour together so we do an activity called "Chopsticks"to relax.  I'll explain that one later.

As you can see, this is work that I love and never tire of doing.  Right now, I balance working with the care of my 98 year old mother who lives at home with me.  Thankfully, I have several excellent caregivers who stay with her so I am able to continue this important work of Brain Fitness for Seniors.