But Wait, There’s More!

Not to be outdone, The Life Care Centers of America also surveyed their senior communities to find out what they are doing to keep residents active. They said that overall, residents are staying in their rooms a lot more, reading, doing word searches, coloring, and so on. Each community received two iPads to help residents take part in video calls to their loved ones. And, hallway bingo has become popular – the activity staff goes hall by hall to call out the letters and numbers while residents check their bingo cards in their doorways.

Other activities include:

• A community in Columbia, Tenn., started an activities’ “room service” card to give to residents so they can circle what activities they are interested in joining.

• Another in Bountiful, Utah, took residents on tours of world-class museums through Travel and Leisure’s new virtual tours. The website offers tours of the British Museum in London, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others.

• In Alamosa, Colo., a community has signed up residents for the Colorado Talking Book Library so that residents can listen to audiobooks. The staff has been providing MP3s with residents’ favorite musical genres.

• In Indianapolis, they have been passing out magazines and having residents go on a scavenger hunt for things in the publications. The residents then cut those items out to make collages.

• A community in Cape Girardeau, Mo. has enjoyed the movie-and-popcorn time, showing a movie on the in-house channel and pushing the popcorn machine down the hallway to serve residents bags of popcorn.

• In Phoenix, they are holding a coloring contest for their residents and also put out a jar full of goodies. Residents guess how many are in the jar. Whoever is closest gets to keep the jar and its contents at the end of the week.