Fun Winter Activities for Your Senior Loved Ones

The days get shorter while the evenings get colder. True enough, many seniors receiving nursing care in New Jersey become homebound in the midst of this chilly weather. However, it is vital that your older family members continue to enjoy doing some activities to occupy their time. Otherwise, the cold weather will have a negative impact on their health and safety.

Benefits of Winter Activities for Your Senior Loved ones

1. They provide a great opportunity for senior loved ones to get outside and enjoy new experiences.
2. They can reduce the risk of depression and increase your happiness, as you will be more engaged with things close by.
3. You get to spend quality time with your loved one!
4. Winter activities such as fishing, snoozing, or bird-watching offer a great way for seniors to reconnect with nature and be active outdoors.
5. Winter activities are great ways to get exercise and spend time with family and friends.
6. Winter activities provide a great way for senior loved ones to meet people and share a common interest.
7. Winter activities can often be fun, relaxing, or both!
8. Having many members of your family out in the cold helps ensure the safety of each senior member’s health conditions during the winter months.
9. There are lots of free or cheap winter activities for seniors!
10. There are lots of exciting winter activities that people don’t have to travel very far to get to!

As a reputable agency providing home care services in Bloomfield, New Jersey, we have come up with a few ideas to get you started with engaging your elderly loved ones in fun winter activities.

• Indoor hobbies
  Do your family members feel unsafe and uncomfortable about going outside? No problem! You can easily have them pick up indoor hobbies. Home caregivers providing senior care in New Jersey usually find that hobbies like crocheting, knitting a scarf, learning new languages, and reading a good book helps with seniors’ emotional and mental well-being. Here are some activities you can try:

Create a memory book

Bake cookies and play baking games

Draw or color pictures of favorite places, memories, or things

Play Bingo

Watch movies from the 1930s to 1950s (for those who grew up in these decades)

Work puzzles such as crosswords on paper or electronically

Read books from their childhood genre and record reactions to them for old time’s sake!

Play card games such as Poker, Rummy, Patience or solitaire

Listen to oldies radio (from their own childhood or the 1950s)

Play “Name that Tune” and/or “I Spy”

Go on a nature walk and/or clean up the yard as a family! Do trivia games online about celebrities, history, sports etc.

Play any board game that includes traveling (like “Trivial Pursuit” or “Guess Who”)

Play a card game like Gin Rummy, Canasta, Uno or Kakuro with family members

Play memory games like “Go Fish”

• Winter organizing
  This is the perfect time for your older loved ones to get organized. Having them sort through their cabinets and closets for the things that they have kept with them through the years can be fun and therapeutic. It is a good way for them to be reminded of treasured and fond memories while also learning to let go of the things they do not need anymore.

Winter organizing tips:

1. Organize the fridge.
2. Place baking soda on carpets and rugs before vacuuming to remove all the pet odors from your home.
3. Clean out your closets to make room for all the clothes that you’re going to wear now that it’s winter time!
4. Check in on a senior loved ones at least once a week to make sure they’re ok and not forgetting anything with their symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease getting worse.
5. Go through your senior loved ones’ medications box and make sure they’re only taking what is appropriate.
6. Order in or cook for yourself. Your loved one might be at home very often so you never know when they may run out of the things you bought for them right before their favorite day of the week comes around.
7. Make your home smell great by burning candles during the winter season, especially if you have a fireplace or you want to open your window for fresh air.
8. Wash and fluff blankets that you and your loved ones will be using throughout the winter season.
9. Clean out snow from your home’s exterior so it doesn’t build up as ice freezes in the future or break off when it thaws if it gets too frozen on the ground.
10. Clean and dust your home as much as possible.
11. Keep a home emergency kit, but don’t forget to have it in place before you need it.

• Mini-social gatherings
  Most of us limit entertaining guests to the holidays. But it doesn’t have to be that way. At Serenity Senior Care, we believe that facilitating mini-social gatherings can already promote your senior family members’ mental health. This is because winter entertaining provides them with the mental and social stimulation that they need to counter the winter blues.