Senior living Activity Directors (AD’s) enrich the lives of residents every single day. It’s a rewarding job that has them planning a mix of events that will stimulate residents on a mental, intellectual, emotional, and physical level. Yet, too often, they have to get creative and make magic happen for residents while working on a tight budget.
It can be a challenging task to create fun, engaging activities tailored to the specific needs and preferences of the seniors they care so deeply about when working with limited funds. Taking into consideration how the pandemic added limitations on certain activities, AD’s were expected to work smarter and keep the fun alive while boosting engagement in innovative ways.
Many AD’s operate with the average activity allocation in a senior living community. Stretching budget dollars to add variety and joyful activities to residents’ schedules can seem overwhelming, but there are lots of activities that aren’t a heavy lift to execute and require minimal materials.
Related: Check out these 7 Budget-Friendly Senior Activities Ideas to help get you started, and Budget-Friendly Resources ADs need to help with DIY designs, activity printables, and program calendars and subscriptions.
How Eversound can help
Enhance engagement levels with each other, staff members, and Senior living Activity Directors to make the most of their social activities. With the use of Eversound’s headphones, resident’s engagement during activities is likely to improve and increase resident satisfaction. Whether it’s Bingo games, bus tours, presentations, movie nights, or town hall meetings, Eversound is a revolutionary solution aimed to improve the quality of life for seniors by breaking down communication barriers through its long range wireless headphone systems as well as dynamic activity programming platform.
Eversound recently participated in “Hearables for All”, a 12-month exploratory program, including 730 users, and launched by the Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing (FPCIW). The program involved evaluating the next generation of wearable devices for older adults with hearing loss and analyzing how the various devices impacted health and social engagement. Eversound provided exceptional results.
Ease the burden of building out your activity calendar through the use of Eversound’s library of ready-to-go activity programming. This platform can be accessed in Eversound’s Member’s Portal with ready-to-use activities and prefilled monthly calendars or curated monthly activity calendars to help take the stress of planning off your shoulders. The portal is a highly valuable time saving tool, reducing stress by helping to more readily plan out activities in less time.
These resources are instantly available to your team with:
- Monthly calendars filled with activities
- 100+ on demand videos
- Grab & go guided programs
- 100+ turn-key program print-outs
- Interactive games
- Accompanying discussion questions
- Accounts for up to 5 users
8 ways to use Eversound for activities
Let’s look at ways you can stretch your budget through the use the Eversound to build engaging activities for your residents:
1. Virtual Fun: Use the Eversound system to take your seniors on virtual vacations where they can learn about culture, art, cuisine, and the history of each location. For easy planning, we have virtual travel programming readily available in Eversound’s members portal.
2. Get Outdoors: Another free resource? The sun! As it starts to warm up, residents enjoy spending as much time outside as possible. Take your trivia game outdoors and utilize the Eversound members portal for dozens of trivia games, or simply pass out Eversound on outdoor walks so residents can do a little exploring while still listening and staying close by. You can point out specific plants, trees, flowers, and animals that you spot along the way.
3. Movie Night: Whether indoor or outdoor with a projector, with the Eversound system, your residents can enjoy a performance from outside with limited distractions to background noise or conversation. Plus, use the discussion guides in the members portal to learn behind-the-scenes secrets on certain classic movies and share everyone’s thoughts afterward.
4. Go Sightseeing: Take the Eversound system and drive somewhere beautiful, or play tourist in your hometown. Gather everyone in your van and take them on a scenic trip with residents equipped with the headphones so they can hear your fun commentary.
5. Gardening: Use Eversound headphones in this physical activity of planting, pulling up weeds, watering plants, or harvesting vegetables. Whether it’s a solitary or group exercise, gardening provides memory care patients, in particular, with a quiet, safe space to reflect and think. Try using your visitation package so residents can easily hear each other and work together from a distance.
6. Discussion Groups: Gather residents for a book club, movie group, or discussion group on any topic — currents events, cooking, sports, pop culture. Using the Eversound system for these discussions encourages participation and helps residents get to know one another with clear communication. The only supplies you’ll need are the snacks!
7. Trivia: Pass out Eversound headphones and printed slips for residents to fill out their answers. Either individual residents can compete against each other or you can assign residents to teams. Ask residents questions, and play music to signal the amount of time residents have to answer. Here are over 50 questions and answers to get you started!
8. Karaoke: Have some singing seniors in the house? Host a Karaoke night asking residents to sing their favorite tunes (without the stage fright!). Remember, Eversound plays music and voice simultaneously, making it perfect for sing-alongs and karaoke! Plus, residents can use a fun wireless microphone with the Eversound system.
Related: Create and print itineraries that consist of the week’s activities and pass them out to residents. Download our template here and copy and paste your itinerary for each activity, where it will be held and what to expect. Are you already an Eversound member? Be sure to check out the additional calendar planning features available in the members portal.
Senior living Activity Directors can rest assured their activity dollars are well spent with the help of Eversound’s listening system and activity programming content. Here’s some of the benefits’s it brings to your community:
- Promote self awareness and confidence to participate fully
- Relieve the stress, anxiety and confusion over not being able to fully embrace the activity
- Improve motor and cognitive skills
- Facilitate better communication with instructions
- Encourage more social interaction in group settings
If you’re looking to easily broadcast your voice so that residents can hear and improve their engagement and participation during activities, Eversound’s audio technology is designed for your community. Eversound helps aging adults combat natural hearing loss and enables more focus, alertness, and engagement during activities and events. With volume adjustment capabilities, residents are able to fine-tune their personal listening experience so they’re able to concentrate on the activity at hand, instead of straining to hear or compete with the surrounding community noise. It enhances what you want to hear but also cancels out the clutter.
Over 1100 communities are currently using Eversound headphones, and more Activity Directors are testing them out every day, loving the activity programming content that is part of an Eversound membership. Interested in learning how an Eversound membership can reduce activity burden while providing access to a library of interactive content? Learn more here!
