Activity and distraction ideas

I have a portable shredder and will place it in front of his chair with a pile of bills and other papers. He enjoys shredding them and then taking the shredded paper to the recycle bin when it fills up.

Be careful to not let him have access to the shredder by himself, or he might start shredding everything in sight!

Sorting old papers….photos…..art stuff always on the dining room table…glueing photos to colored paper for an album…list spices on hand…simple model airplanes …painting model cars….easy puzzles

I know Reagan was beloved by many, but what kind of country has a commander in chief with dementia?

That's a good point. I feel that there's a strong desire to contribute, and to make oneself useful. So even though it's easier for me to do things, I'll leave things half-done, so that is can be completed by a PWD (with a little supervision)

Same here! I ask him to empty out the dishwasher. Sometimes it takes a while to find things later. Settthe table with the silverware and napkins is another one. He feels purposeful. I make sure to thank him for his help.

What a great idea! When you mentioned “magnets” in the garage box, it reminded me of those magnet sculpture kits. I bet something like that might be interesting to some. And there’s no right or wrong way to arrange them. And you can put them together and take them apart over and over again.

Would he fiddle w a carpenters busy board?

Throughout the years, games like Uno, Bingo, Scrabble, Wordsearch worked well. There was a local educational game store that I would go to and find what might interest my mom. There were trivia, skill or word games I'd try. She also liked to exercise, so I could put an armchair exercise show on the tv and she would do that. She colored a lot. I would find books with images that weren't so intricate for her. Later, I found water painting sets. They are called aqua paint from Relish. That company also has other activity ideas. She would do a bean bag toss game. I would just keep trying different things. Those activity blankets never worked for her.

A stick vacuum! That’s the greatest! DH has been blowing out the garage, I hadn’t thought of those little house ones. ….he who makes the crumbs can vacuum them up!

I wonder if PWD like vacuuming because the noise allows them to tune out the world and "get lost" in their thoughts. I don't love vacuuming but it was always good for some "alone" time when we had kids at home, and DH always said he liked mowing the yard for that reason. There is also a rhythm to vacuuming and the rhythm/music area is one of the last parts of the brain to be devastated by dementia.

My DH loved paint by numbers until he couldn't remember where he was painting after dipping the brush into the paint. He got so frustrated and was deeply devastated by being reminded of the disease. He also enjoyed working on larger size jigsaw puzzles until he couldn't and got frustrated with them, too. The months prior to placement, he literally sat in his lounge chair doing nothing all day. Some days he'd go upstairs around 6pm to "go to bed" refusing dinner. But when I started cooking or heating up leftovers, the aroma of food would draw him back downstairs. And he'd ask, "do you have enough for me?" "Of course!" I'd answer in the most cheerful voice I could muster, as tears rolled down my throat into my stomach. I suppose you can just keep trying different things until it doesn't work anymore.

I remember seeing "paint by number", or similar, where the paint is in the page and the water releases the color. Maybe that would work.