Activities with a twist

I have a family property, and I do tend to lean my suggestions toward families, but I recently decided to have a "Soup Off" with my residents and found that more of my elderly participated than my other residents. I asked one of these residents why I hadn't seen her at any of the activities before now and she told me that this activity was something she was comfortable with. This was something that she loved doing, but because it was just her in the household she didn't do much cooking. And she hoped I did more of these types of activities in the future.

So I have planned a "Pie Off", and a "Cookie Off", etc. next year and I hope this will bring out more of my elderly residents.

How do these "Cook Offs" work? You need to make it manageable. You can have each person bring in their soup and then you dip it out and everyone gets a taste. You have a questionnaire ready for each of them to fill out about what they like and dislike about the soup and they give it a score and then each of them put their questionnaire in a "suggestion box" type of container. I purchased some Ziploc freezer bags and put about 2 cups of each soup in a bag. I wrote the name of the soup on the bag (before filling it). This way everyone got a sample of the soup (and the recipe which the resident brought with them and I made copies of to hand out).

I then went through the questionnaires, added up the points and announced the winner while everyone was enjoying the soup and company.

I ended up with 6 different soup recipes to try at home and they ended up with some new friends. They have talked about doing some kind of cook off each month. I can't wait for the desserts, cookies, pies and cakes cook offs.

So try something a little out of the box. You might find your residents enjoy it and you might even get something special out of it.