Thursday, January 28, 2016

Valentines Crafts for Seniors

Valentine Crafts for Seniors The following information is a review of some Valentine crafts I did at my Mom's nursing home during the last year of her life.  I hope you will find it useful in working with Seniors or Children in your life.

Easy Valentine Crafts

 
Crafts for the elderly with dementia need to be very basic. I work with the residents at my Mother's memory unit and help them to do a different craft activity each week. I have been doing this for the past year and have learned by trial and error which types of crafts seem to work well with the group of women. The crafts need to be involved enough to keep their interest, but simple enough that they can do the majority of the work by themselves.

On this page I will tell you about two crafts that they will be doing for Valentines this year.

photos by mbgphoto



Valentine Treasure Box - a place for trinkets and treasures


heart shaped box

The ladies in my Mom's group love to make special boxes for different occassions. They will then put the boxes in their rooms and keep small items such as candies, jewelry or other trinkets in them. For Valentines day I was able to find some great boxes in the dollar racks at Target. These boxes are heart shaped and made of heavy cardboard. As you can see from the photo, they have a design on the box but the lid is a solid color. This will leave plenty of space for the ladies to decorate the top of their special box.

Heart Decorations - provide lots of variety

foam stickers

I am keeping the heart boxes fairly simple. I give each lady a box and a variety of stickers. I show them a sample of a box that I have made and then encourage them to design their own boxes. The decorations that we are using include a variety of different heart shaped stickers. I have puffy stickers, 3D stickers, foam stickers and rhinestone stickers. From experience I have found that some of the ladies like to line up their design very precisely and others like to cover their box with lots of different stickers. I have also found that some of the ladies like to copy exactly what I have done and feel frustrated if they don't have an example, so I also make an example and tell them they can make the box like mine or design it however they would like. Although, I am only using different stickers this time, you could use a variety of materials to decorate the boxes. Some thoughts that come to mind are buttons, rickrack, or cut out hearts. They could also paint a design on the boxes or use markers.

heart stickers

Puffy Sticker to Decorate

puffy stickers

Homemade Valentine Card

Blank Cards Ready to Decorate

blank cards
I found these blank cards in the Target dollar bins. They came 8 in a pack with a bright pink plain outside and a white inside. They will be perfect for making some Valentine cards. You can also find these types of cards at craft stores or you can make your own from construction paper.
 

Valentine Sticker Sayings

valentine stickers
These stickers are one of the varieties I will have out for the ladies to use in decorating their cards. I liked them because they include a variety of sayings for Valentines day. The ladies can use these to add a message to their cards. As an alternative I could have them cut sayings out of old magazines or cards. I could also provide markers for them to write their own messages.
 

Finished Card

finished card

Inside Card

inside card



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6 comments:

  1. I love all of the crafts you featured! That box is awesome. I did something very similar to that with my children when they were in elementary school. I especially love the idea of helping the ladies make Valentine cards that they loved ones can treasure for a lifetime. These really are wonderful craft suggestions for seniors, the elderly with dementia, or even children. I also think they would be great for people with arthritis in their hands who still enjoy being creative, but cannot bear the pain of gripping anything tightly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is such a good idea! My mom's assisted living place keeps their clients very busy and likely will provide some Valentine card or decor-making sessions in the next couple of weeks. I'll check with my sister (who lives nearby - I live 1000 miles away) to be sure that Mom has something similar to do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm not much of Crafter, but I can certainly see how these valentine crafts could be a hit in a senior's facility as a group project

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's wonderful that you help these ladies break their usual routines and give them something to look forward to. Your crafts look just right. Even I could do them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You had some very creative and cute ideas to share with the ladies at your mom's retirement home, Mary Beth. I know they appreciated the activities you brought in for them to do. My mom lived in a similar home and there were regular craft activities for the residents who wanted to participate. I know my mom enjoyed them all.

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  6. How wonderful that you do these crafts with the seniors! And these are good tips and ideas.

    ReplyDelete

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