activities

The Gentlemen’s Club – Week 5

December 19, 2016December 24, 2016 Brett0 comment

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We decided to change our name from ‘Men’s Group’ to ‘The Gentleman’s Club’ cos it was part of our banter this week and is probably a bit more dignified.

No photos this week as we did painting again, but we did have two new men join the group, and they loved it.

I wanted to share a story which involved my assistant, and once again I copped a BIG lesson.

We were planning the activity for next week and I suggested we make a ‘hardware style activity station’ for each man out of bolts and nuts etc. At the time I thought it was a good idea when he stopped me in my tracks.

He snapped at me and said “Brett …. No!!!…That activity is not gonna happen. I joined your group because you gave these men real purpose. Do not go backwards, only do things that mean something and are useful. We owe it to these men to give them purpose in life ”

Wow!… I was shocked with his passionate outburst, but rather than be offended that he hated my idea, I am going to embrace the feedback and involve ‘purpose ‘ in ALL my activities.

This life lesson brought to you by the Dementia Downunder Gentlemen’s Club. The most authentic & insightful classroom in the world!

Men’s Group – Week 2 Report

November 25, 2016November 28, 2016 Brett0 comment

Special Guest – “Elvis Partington!”

The ‘hands’ tell the story in this collection of pics. Plenty of tactile activities this week.We played indoor golf, vacuumed with dustbusters, drew stuff, tuned the radio, polished silver, sharpened pencils,ate freddo frogs and choc coated Scotch Fingers, messed with old items (telephone, ink stamps, adding machine, etc), and generally just hung out in the area we now call the ‘MEN’S DEN’.

A few things went wrong :

My 2 Dustbusters both ran out of charge.

The designer dust I brought in to vac up… went everywhere. ( I upset the cleaner!)

The textas I brought in for ‘free-hand drawing’ went dry.

One of the men dropped the entire contents of the electric pencil sharpener all over the carpet.

Another man emptied the DustBuster contents all over his cream pants.

A very wobbly resident nearly fell when he hooked the extension cord around his foot.

I had two men ‘walk off’, two men fall asleep.

Feisty Fred heckled me the entire session with ” I am so stuffed, I don’ t know what the hell you want me to do!”

He also said “Why don’t you do this stuff when I’m not half dead… I am so bloody tired!”

I actually ran out of activities even though I filled my van with double the amount I brought last week.

Besides all that it went pretty good:-)

Mens’ Group Session #1 – Mixed Bag

November 19, 2016November 24, 2016 Brett0 comment

I thought I would give a report on the first ‘men’s group’ session at the nursing home I have done for a while. I was really pleased with the participation and engagement of the 4 participants. We did so many different things that 3 out of the 4 men were asleep by the end of the 90 minutes as they were exhausted.

I brought a suitcase full of ‘conversation starters’ ( mixed items) which kept things moving and changing as we had our own blokey ‘show and tell’. It also allowed me to determine the interests and capabilities of each man for future sessions.

The tasks we tried were as follows:

old fashioned manual pencil sharpening
electric pencil sharpening
polishing tarnished silver items with brasso eg candle holder, tongs, ice bucket
indoor fishing from the ice bucket (complete with tangles and hooking items)

Smelling different incense sticks
Indoor bowling with tube/tennis ball (for men in princess chair)
Sorting wallplugs into holders
Swiss army knife ( we spent ages pulling out each feature of the knife – they loved this)
Multitool gadgets

I conducted a few races & challenges, with the men with good cognition/movement using manual pencil sharpeners racing against men with limitations using the electric pencil sharpener. I also did a timed event with ‘The General’ where he had to place 15 wallplugs into a plastic holder within 1 minute. He did this several times and counted aloud for every wallplug he inserted. The highlight was opening as many functions of the Swiss army knife as we could and discovering the secret items which were a pin, a pen, a toothpick and some tweezers.

The conversations were great as well and there were plenty of laughs and smiles. ‘The General’ was cracking jokes with me as we did the pencil sharpening task and would say things like “it’s great to see you getting to the point” and “you are very sharp today”.

Bob actually stayed awake for the entire 90 mins and smiled constantly.( he normally sleeps heavily through this time).

A great first session and what I learnt was that it was real handy to have a heap of activity options at my disposal to keep changing things up and holding the men’s interest.