Home Care Activities: Create Your Own Winter Wonderland
Keeping your parents’ minds active and engaged is a powerful way of sharpening their memory, preventing cognitive decline, and supporting overall higher mental, emotional, and cognitive health. One exceptional way to do this is fill their home care routine with fun activities that they can enjoy with you, their in home health care services provider, and even your children. These activities encourage your parents to exercise their minds in unique and creative ways, stimulate imagination and self-expression, and foster conversation and sharing with the people around them for meaningful social interaction and memory making.
This activity is a wonderful way to celebrate the season, whether you want to mimic the beautiful fall of the snow outside, or are longing for some of the sparkling white stuff to make your winter season seem a bit more authentic even if you live in a warm climate. A combination of a craft and a science experiment, this activity enables your aging parents to create their own snowflakes using supplies and ingredients that they likely already have around their home, or that you can easily find in a local craft or grocery store.
What You Will Need
- A small wooden rod or a pencil
- String
- Borax
- White pipe cleaners
- A wide mouth jar
- Blue food coloring
- Boiling water
- A sharp knife
- Scissors
What to Do
- Cut the white pipe cleaner into three sections about the same size each
- Twist the sections together in the center, creating what will look like a six sided star
- Trim the edges to make sure the points of the shape are even and the same shape
- Attach a piece of string to one of the pipe cleaners
- Tie the opposite end to the small wooden rod or pencil
- Carefully fill the jar with the boiling water
- For each cup of water, add three tablespoons of borax, one tablespoon at a time
- Stir until the mixture is dissolved, though some of the borax may settle on the base of the jar
- Add some of the blue food coloring to the jar to make a nice ice like color
- Put the pipe cleaner snowflake into the jar, allowing for the small wooden rod or pencil to rest on the edge and the snowflake will be able to hang freely in the borax and food coloring solution
- Leave the snowflake overnight
- When removing, the snowflake should now be covered in blueish crystals and can be hung as decoration
Special tip: Part of the beauty of snowflakes, and what this project illustrates, is that no two snowflakes are exactly alike. Take this inspiration and change up the look of all of your snowflakes by using different colors of food coloring each time you make a new snowflake. You can also forego the food coloring all together and instead use colored pipe cleaners so that the crystals are authentically clear but the color of the pipe cleaner shines through. After making the snowflakes, talk about how different they are and what embracing differences in others means. This is a great way to involve your children and to have meaningful conversations with them.
If you or an aging loved one are considering caregiver services in Harleysville, PA, contact the caring professionals at Reliant At Home Care today (610) 674-6860.
