Craft Ideas for Nursing Home Residents
- Present nursing home patients with card-making activities. Set out different colors of card stock, crayons, markers, paints and other craft elements patients can use to adorn their cards. Encourage them to use the materials to create one-of-a-kind cards to give their loved ones for holidays, birthdays or to use for correspondence. Prompt patients to use their creativity; however, if you notice a lack of enthusiasm in patients, or if patients are struggling to think of ideas, offer suggestions and try to get them excited about making their own cards.
- Painting is a soothing activity for elderly nursing home patients. Offer patients different types of paints to use -- watercolors, tempera and even finger paints -- as well as different canvases to paint on, such as paper, artist canvases and clay pots. Encourage them to paint anything they wish -- from the abstract to a landscape of their favorite location. Through this activity, patients can truly express their feelings and creativity, as they paint things meaningful to them.
- Another craft project that nursing home patients enjoy creating is collages. Set out piles of magazines, scrap pieces of colored and textured paper, fabrics and other materials that patients incorporate into their collages. Prompt patients to first draw a picture, which they can then glue the items to create a collage, or have them create a collage of items arranged in a random order.
- Nursing home residents may like to create jewelry for personal use or to give as a gift. To create jewelry, residents will need an assortment of different sized, shaped and colored beads, string and jewelry line to thread the beads onto, safety pins and perhaps even earring posts. Help patients use the materials to create pieces of jewelry, or allow them to create jewelry on their own.