Keeping Your Residents Active

Activities...this is something that can take a lot of time, cost a lot of money and then no one (or very few people) show up.

So why do activities?

Because activities can be fun, can get you away from the boring work, can make your residents happy enough to want to stay at your complex and tell others to come live there.

So what activities can you do that are fun, inexpensive and don't take up a lot of your time? Well, how about:

1. Set up a coloring contest for the children? Print a picture out that has to do with the season/holiday and invite the children to color them and bring them back. When you get them back, give each picture a number (ex...Little Suzie and Bobby each bring back the picture they colored. You put the number 1 beside Suzie's and the number 2 besides Bobby. Then on a note pad or computer program you put #1 = Suzie, #2 = Bobby.) You leave scrap paper in a basket next to the bulletin board where you have hung all the colored pages. The tenants write the number down of the picture they like best. (If Mrs Smith and Mr Campbell each like the picture that has the #2 beside it, then they would write down the number 2 and put the piece of scrap paper in a drop box or drop it off at the office) Make sure you don't tell anyone who actually colored the picture until the contest is over. When the contest deadline comes, then you count up the votes and the child with the most votes wins a prize. How much money or time do you have in this activity? VERY LITTLE. Purchase a coloring book that has seasons in it or holiday pictures (you may have to get different levels of difficulty depending on your age groups - just make sure the 3 year olds have a different voting section of their own different from the 7 year olds), make copy of the page you want to use for the contest. Hand it out to the children on your property. Depending on where you get the coloring book you may have anywhere from $1.00 to $5.00 cost (and the web has lots of places that you can print out coloring pages for free). I don't' know about your office, but mine always has scrap paper that I can use for the numbering of the artwork and for the votes. Cost - nil. As for the prize, make it what your complex can afford. A free pizza (some local restaurants will give you a $10.00 coupon if you purchase a $10.00 coupon - so you now have two prizes for the cost of one and you can use the 2nd prize for another contest later on), a $10.00 gift card to Wal*mart (this is like gold to some children) or give movie tickets, etc.
2. Have door decorating contest. You can go with whatever holiday is coming up or be more creative and use something fun like: The first week of August is National Smile Week, so have a contest that the decorations have to make you smile. Ask three business people to be the judges (a police officer, a teacher, the florist, etc.) You may be shocked at how many people will agree to come look at the doors and vote. Not all of course, but keep asking. And what if the teacher, the florist, or the officer knows someone looking for an apartment...now they know what kinds of things you do for/with your residents and bang...you have someone applying for an apartment. You can give out only one prize or the top three
3. Another simple thing is to create an activity board. You take a cork board and you decorate it with a theme. Since today is Halloween, I will use that as an example...I took a cute Halloween coloring picture and I colored it, then I stapled it to the bulletin board. I found a few quick and easy "gross" recipes (Jell-o has some neat stuff on their website), so I printed the recipes out and stapled them to the cork board, then I found some simple Halloween crafts (from decorating your house to making a simple trick or treat bag) and I printed them out and stapled them to the cork board. Then I made copies of each, the uncolored pictured, the recipes, the crafts...I used a different colored paper for each item and I put them in a 3 tier wall file holder next to the bulletin board. This way when the residents came into the community room, they saw the bulletin board and they could take the copies home to do there.

Activities don't always mean a group thing (although we will talk about those kinds of activities later). An activity is taking the time to give your residents a chance to shine...in public or in the privacy of their own home...

Try these activities and/or let me know some of the things you have done with your residents.