Accessible Scrapbooking Activity

We have been trying to create more Montessori based activities for Mom and we have noticed in a home care environment that it is hard to think of something new all the time. In fact, it is hard to even create one new activity a week. Also, we need some activities that anyone can do with Mom even if they are not familiar with the Montessori format.

So, I started my search for an activity that would fit the following criteria:

1. Follows Montessori principles of being fairly self explanatory, has a template to follow, and accessible to the skills Mom still has.
2.  Ongoing project that you could do multiple times a week but it not actually the same thing over and over again. Provides some variety.
3. Anyone can pick this up and do the activity with Mom. Easy to understand and follow for all.
4. Needs to be meaningful so Mom does not feel like she is just doing busywork. 

I am an avid scrapbooker and have been wanting to scrapbook with Mom her hundreds of photos but scrapbooking takes a lot of color coordination, cutting, pasting, writing, decorating, etc... and is really too complicated for Mom. However, I found a new scrapbooking style that is still pretty but much more simplified. It's called Project Life by Becky Higgins. Project Life is a simple scrapbooking system with coordinating journaling cards and patterned cards so you can just slip your photos and writing in the pockets and be done with your project. You can fit four 4x6 photos and four journaling blocks on each page. It was created to document your life week by week but as Becky says, you can use the system any way you want. So, I got the kit and set it up in a way that would work for Mom.

I labeled the elements of the kit with coordinating directions written out onto cards and put them into one of the pocketed page protectors so people can see exactly where everything goes.

Project Life adapted for use for a person with dementia.

Basically, you can take a few photos out of Mom's many boxes of pictures and set a few in front of her. You ask her what photo she would like to put in the album first and she can point to it. You can ask her what she knows about the photo or who is in it and write that on a journaling card. If she does not know, you just leave it blank. You then point to two of the photo pockets and ask "Would you like to put the photo here or here?" and Mom can choose where to put the photo. For the title on each page, you can take out two title pages and ask Mom which one she would like. Many of Mom's photos are 3x5 or 4x4 so I cut extra 4x6 colored cardstock so people can adhere the photo to a background, again giving Mom a choice of two colors and asking her to pick the one she likes the best. Sometimes Mom can figure out how to slip the photos and journaling into the pockets and sometimes she can't so we can put them in for her, but always give her the choice of where to put it.

Finished scrapbook page.

This is an activity that allows Mom to feel the feelings of the events in the photos even if she does not remember who is in them or what the picture is of. It gives her choice of where to put the photos and what colors to use in a simple way with a template of the pocket pages to follow. It is an ongoing activity since we have a ton of photos and it is repetitive but not the exact same thing each day. The directions are simple and color coded so anyone who comes over can do this activity with Mom.

I am very grateful to Becky Higgins for creating such a simple system that I could adapt for Mom who has dementia. This is a great meaningful activity for all of us to do together which will last for generations to come.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie

Everyone Is An Artist

We have expanded the ArtCare for Dementia program that we run from the Carolyn L. Farrell Foundation for Brain Health to include other forms of art besides just the TimeSlips storytelling. Today we had our first papercrafting session and it went really well.

I have been scrapbooking for years and know how fun and meditative working with paper can be so I wanted to bring that to our ArtCare participants. I also needed to think of something that would be simple to do no matter how well your organizational skills were working or your manual dexterity. I wanted everyone to know that we are all artists.

Today I brought different scraps of colored and patterned paper and let everyone tear the paper up and glue the strips onto a white background. Then I cut those collages up in squares and mounted the squares on colored notecards. When you describe the project, it is hard to imagine the beautiful artwork that will be created out of the collages, but just look at these pictures to see what everyone made. The collages turn out to be mosaic and kind of a stained glass effect squares that can be set off wonderfully by a colored background.

The best part of all this was to see everyone have fun with the collage and really see their smiles once they saw their notecards. Projects like this really show how if we just let our imagination go, we can all create beautiful art. The purpose of our ArtCare programs is to bring joy into people's lives, and I think we really did that today.

This is a project you can easily do at home with your loved one with dementia. Then they have cards to send people for birthday's, anniversaries, etc... or put them into stacks of 5 cards with a bow around them and you can give them away as presents.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie