5 Assisted Living Activities To Keep Seniors Healthy

When a senior is under the care of an assisted living facility, you can guarantee they’ll be in good hands as they’re well taken care of. Apart from their regular meals, scheduled medications, and socialization with their fellow seniors, the nursing home can provide activities that can promote health to keep them entertained and healthy.

As days go by, seniors might get bored doing the same routine over and over again. This can be tiresome, especially if nursing homes don’t offer the seniors varied engagements and activities. To keep them happy, energized, and entertained, listed below are the assisted living activities to keep seniors healthy:

1. Low-Intensity Workouts

While a senior can easily take a walk in the morning for their daily movement needs, it will be a great idea if you can host low-intensity workouts to maximize what their bodies can do. With this kind of workout, you can allow their bodies to move around. Moreover, you shouldn’t worry too much about their abilities, when the routines you’ll be having are easy for them to follow.

Before you begin with low-intensity workouts, you need to ensure every activity is appropriate to their age to ensure their safety. You can refer to a recommended reading about what activities you can let them do. Along with this, you should also know how workouts can greatly improve an aging person’s health. This is to know how to motivate your seniors to get up from their chairs and keep their bodies moving.

2. Arts And Crafts

Most seniors will love to explore any new skill they might enjoy while inside a nursing home. Since they have plenty of time to spare to do anything they’d like, they might be open to trying out arts and crafts to boost their creativity.

You can begin by providing them various art supplies every week to see which style they’re most likely to be interested in. You can give them pencils, watercolor, oil pastel, charcoal, or acrylics. Additionally, you should open your doors for people who enjoy different crafts such as pottery, knitting, jewelry-making, bag-making, and more. With this, you need to prepare a professional who can teach them the basic skills, and provide them with the right materials.

3. Music And Dancing

Getting up on their feet to dance and move around will always be a great activity in a nursing home. Apart from keeping the senior’s body moving, they can have fun. You can invite other people to dance with them as well. It might also be the perfect time for them to show off their dancing skills in front of their friends.

If seniors aren’t too fond of working out to keep their bodies moving, maybe dancing would help them get up on their feet. With the right tune and fun environment, a senior can surely be dancing and having fun. Just ensure you play time-appropriate songs so they can fully enjoy the music and dance to the beat.

4. Gardening

For your seniors with green thumbs, giving them the chance to grow their produce and flowers will be a great and fun activity. In this way, you can keep them occupied as they focus on growing their plants healthily, which they can harvest or put in their bedroom vase. This can also help them get up in the morning to tend to their garden by watering, mulching, and removing any pests from their plants.

Ideally, you can offer them various plant seeds along with the right lightweight gardening tools. With this activity, you can allow them to keep moving, entertained, and empowered, especially when they can use their fruits to create their own fruit water infusion, giving them a refreshing, healthy drink.

5. Pet Therapy

Sometimes, all a senior needs are to rub a good dog’s belly to put a smile on their face. There are plenty of pet lovers out there. And giving your seniors a chance to pet a dog or a cat, with the help of willing pet owners, will help to boost their moods, keep their minds alert, and thus allowing them to be healthy.

If the nursing home can’t allow a pet to stay permanently in your area, you should provide a pet therapy day to invite the friendliest pets for your seniors to enjoy.

Ideally, you should look for pets that are safe to be around with seniors. Confirm any fur allergies from your seniors to prevent any possible reactions which could harm their health. For your best choices, having hypoallergenic dogs and cats will be an excellent idea for your seniors during their pet therapy days.

Conclusion

While being in a nursing home can help ensure a senior is eating well, it would be great if the place can provide various activities that help boost their health. While some might prefer just to sit and watch good TV shows, allowing their minds and bodies to keep moving is the best choice for their daily exercises.

You can provide various activities that might fit their lifestyle, and keep their minds and bodies moving. The more activities they choose to participate in, the better it will be to keep seniors healthy. You could even add in small rewards each time they complete a task, to motivate them in your proposed activities.