The Best Friends Book of Alzheimer's Activities, Vol. 1

Bring out the best in each person with dementia with these versatile, easy-to-implement Best Friends activities. A best friend knows your habits, what you like to do, and what makes you feel good. The Best Friends Book of Alzheimer’s Activities puts all of these qualities to work to help you transform the activity programming at your nursing facility, adult day center, assisted living facility, or home care setting. Staff, participants, and even family members will all benefit. With the ideas and suggestions found in this book, any member of a program’s care staff can turn the simplest interaction with a person with dementia into an activity that helps satisfy essential physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. In these inspiring pages, you will find formal and informal activities (with innumerable variations), communication and conversation tips, suggested songs and musical tie-ins, adaptations for people in the early and late stages of Alzheimer’s disease, activities for unprogrammed time (including evenings), ideas especially for men, opportunities for intergenerational exchanges, preventive measures to avoid unwanted surprises, and reminders of the spiritual benefits inherent in good activities. Planning activities for people with dementia may seem challenging, but this book shows how easy and natural it can be.