Scrapbooking Summer Memories For Alzheimer’s Patients
July 16, 2008 by Mary Emma Allen
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Preserving our memories and those of Alzheimer’s patients can lead to scrapbooking fun. I led a scrapbooking activity for Alzheimer’s patients at a nursing home and think they had as much fun as I did.
With the help of an activity aide, we selected pictures taken of the residents as they engaged in various events at the home. The patients exclaimed, “That’s me!”
If they were able, they cut out the pictures and selected the colors of the background. We pasted the photos and embellishments to the pages, one or two for each resident. Then they shared with one another before we put the pages in a community scrapbook.
This is something you also can do with your Alzheimer’s patient in your home, and with children if they’re around for the summer. Find photos from the past or from current events. Scrapbook these summer memories.
Even if the patient can’t participate very much, they may share memories of the past. It could be a way to calm them for a few moments while everyone preserving memories.
You also can make a collage of memories. Enter it into a scrapbook or frame and hang on the wall.
(Amazon image)
(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen
Let me suggest another idea, one that I included in the second book of my scrapbooking mystery series–if you have caregivers for your Alzheimer’s patient, share photos of the patient’s life with them. This is a visual reminder of the person the patient was in his/her youth. One woman whose mother is in a care facility reported that she hung a photo of her mother on the door of her mother’s room. “My goal was to help them see the woman I grew up with, not the woman she’d become.”