Research Activity Number Three

Activity: Where Are You?

Target participant group: Geriatrics

Therapeutic potential of this activity: To provide an opportunity for story-telling, remembrance, and sharing pastimes. Strengthens participant’s memory. Allows participants to work on language and communication skills, as well as to get to know each other better.

What other groups may benefit from this activity?

This activity would benefit all groups and ages.

I believe participants with Alzheimer’s and Dementia would benefit from this activity greatly because they usually remember lots of memories from when they were growing up, but cannot remember the most recent activities in their lives, so this allows them to participate and share something special about themselves.

What groups may not be as appropriate for this activity?

Depending on the severity of participants with Dementia, this activity may not be appropriate because it may be more stressful than beneficial for them.

Children with Autism may not be able to participant because it may be hard for them to communicate their thoughts depending on their level of functioning. Also children with Autism are generally young so they may not have formed many memories, but this may be beneficial for older participants with Autism.

Activity description: A fun activity that allows participants to reflect on their pastimes, socialize, and get to know one another better. This activity can work for all sizes of groups.

Facilitation/Instruction:

• 1.      The facilitator will choose a date that is relevant to all participants.
• 2.      Each participant is to reflect on what they were doing on that date. Examples of dates that you could choose to do are April 1969, Summer 1950, or to make it more difficult you could do an exact date-January 24, 1974.  
• 3.      The facilitator can let participants choose to share when they are ready to, or you could have the members go around in a circle.
• 4.      After all members have shared, the group can reflect on all of the places people were and the activities they were doing.
• 5.      The facilitator can choose a new date and do another round, or they can choose to be done with this activity.

Resources needed: None

Best leadership style for this activity: Participative leadership style

Where did you find this activity?

I found the idea for this activity on the following website but created the remainder of the activity.  http://www.drexel.edu/rlo/inside/ramanual/Files/Ice%20Breakers.pdf

Where can others find more information on this activity?

Ice Breakers, Name Games, and Other Activities. http://www.drexel.edu/rlo/inside/ramanual/Files/Ice%20Breakers.pdf