Everybody wins with this program: Residents | Nursing Homes | Family & Friends
Description of Letters | Mail Board | Volunteer Visitors of NH residents
8-Step Campaign to bring more visitors to nursing home residents.

"Exercise

Makes

Your

Heart

Happy"

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nursing homes activities home

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EXERCISING IS FUN IN NURSING HOMES WHEN NURSING HOME RESIDENTS SHARE THE NURSING HOME ACTIVITIES MAIL BOARD.

They can do these exercises to sing alongs, each in their own way and at their own speed.

LET’S GET STRONG

Exercise sessions are difficult for residents as well as those leading the exercises because the abilities and disabilities of residents are so varied. We wanted to find a simple exercise program that everyone could do together, in their own way, at their own speed and we wanted to make it fun. We found our answer in a letter from a little girl.

Dear MLI,

My name is Melissa. I am 9 years old.

My teacher told us about your project for finding fun things for nursing home residents to do together. Here is my suggestion. Exercising is not fun if you are just exercising. But if you're singing and exercising, that makes it fun. What makes it more fun is to try to act out the words of the song.

My Grandpa is in a wheelchair and Grandma is not. They turn on music and act like they're wild, throwing their arms about, bobbing their heads, clapping and stomping their feet. They both do different movements but they move everything they've got as fast as they can and laugh a lot. They say they are exercising together but they don’t feel like they’re exercising. They look like they are just acting silly.

When I visit them, they play songs or listen to the radio and each one of us makes up our own exercises. Grandpa says to just listen to the words and do whatever they're singing about. If they aren't singing about something you can do, then do your own thing to the music.

One day when I was visiting them, the electricity went off and we couldn’t listen to music. We didn’t know each other’s songs so we decided to sing children’s songs and exercise to the words we sang ourselves. We had a good time.

I think that nursing home residents could do this same thing together. The songs are easy and since most people know the words, they don’t have to think about anything but moving their muscles. It's fun for me and Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma says it keep the blood flowing.

Yours truly,
Melissa

Thank you, Melissa.

The freedom of choice to follow the words or make up their own exercises allows residents to participate, at will, according to their highest and individual abilities and still have fun together.

Tammy, our music teacher, selected 21 songs specifically for this category. Almost everyone knows these songs by heart but if needed, there are listening samples of these tunes on the sample music CD, with the activities department.

These song sheets are formatted and designed to match the Share A Song category. There are nearly 200 songs in the Share A Song category and any of these can be interchanged as an exercise song.

You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around.