Monday, August 17, 2009

Activity Planning for the Fall



This month our team designs the mid Summer and Fall program and we come up with several ideas. We decide to introduce our clients to our local native culture, and choose to highlight the Ohlone people, who inhabited the San Francisco Bay Area for hundreds of years. We want to bring a natural flow to our programming to create easy transitions in our decor and activities. We follow the thread of history with Missions and ranchers, who occupied our land after the native culture disappeared. All this fits into one large landscape on one of our display walls, allowing us to change it gradually with the themes.

The Ohlone
For information about the Ohlone I dive into my own library and search the Internet. I love reading the terrific and evocative descriptions by Malcolm Margolin of the daily life of the Ohlone, and the vivid illustrations of the people, the animals and the natural surroundings. I pay attention to finding reliable resource materials, and search for images of dwellings, artifacts and people.
Here are several activities that allow for different levels of participation:

- making a tule hut and boat with paper and raffia
- coloring an image of an Ohlone family in front of a tule hut
- coloring and cutting out animals and trees: bear, deer, fish, oaks and pines
- weaving a small basket
- looking at and discussing images of the Ohlone

The cutouts are used for the display, and slowely but surely the landscape comes alive!

The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, by Malcolm Margolin and Michael Harney, 25th Anniversary Edition



Sunday, August 16, 2009

Adult Day Care: Active Elders

At the Adult Day Care where I work, we take care of elders with dementia, Alzheimer's disease and other forms of memory impairment. We serve a hot lunch, do daily exercises (45 minutes), and offer a variety of activities, including SPCA visits, art and crafts, cooking and gardening, word games, bingo, monthly movies, sing-along, and a variety of guest artists. Most of our clients are picked up by a special bus service around 9AM, and some are brought in by spouses, children or hired caregivers. Some of them live in Board and Care Homes, some with family and a few of them live independently. Around 3PM they return home, after a day without TV, but with a hot lunch, snacks and plenty of liquids. We offer assistance with medication and with the use of the restroom, if needed. Most of our clients love coming to the center, some keep forgetting where they are, but all are safe and continually invited to participate in the program.
Our days are carefully planned around the incoming clients. Our staff to client ratio is 1:5 (this might change with the impending budget cuts), which allows us to accommodate different stages in he progression of cognitive loss, and have our clients stay active as long as possible.
Our calendar and menu are published and mailed every month, and follow the major holidays and seasonal changes with monthly themes and guests. A set daily routine is followed by all, with regular activities in smaller groups in the afternoons.