Senior Crafts

Easy Craft Ideas for Seniors or those With Limited Dexterity

1. Stuffing pillows is a comfortable, painless, and enjoyable way to help keep fingers nimble.

Pillows are probably the easiest with large stuffed animals being the next easiest (by large I mean without all the intricacies to get tightly in the corners.)

2. I think coloring with crayons in a coloring book is not age appropriate, but the elderly can use colored marking pens to color something.

It would make it look like painting. On construction paper, I like the idea of using water colors or tempura paints.

Sometimes I would show them how to soak up some of the runny colors on a dry brush to bring out some effects.

3. I had activities involving stringing beads for a necklace.

I used large needles through which I threaded thin yarn. Here I would use caution where some of the residents would have a tendency to swallow beads, thinking they were candies.

Naturally, those residents I had given something else to do.

4. Most of my arts and crafts involved decorating along the walls and sometimes the bulletin board.

I would want to create a picture of different items centered on a theme and arrange what they had painted with any of the above media.

5. In preparing for voting and informing residents of candidates, I prepared posters on which I traced the letters with stencils.

Then the residents would color in with the marking pens as part of arts and crafts or when someone wanted something independently to do.

The same would apply when I wanted to make some signs about some upcoming party or event. I think with this idea, they feel like they are contributing to their home rather than doing busy work.

6. For parties for different employees or anyone celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, etc., I had them make simple favors.

7. This idea came from New Hampshire artist, Kim Logan. You can see some of her wonderful portraits (of people and houses - how clever! - here). Kim works with adults suffering from Alzheimer's and thought of having them make clay wind chimes using non-toxic air-dry clay. I recommended Amaco Self-Hardening Porcelain Clay to meet all the requirements.

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