Therapeutic Recreation Month

The National Therapeutic Recreation Society established National Therapeutic Recreation Week in 1984. This special week has been celebrated during the second week of July annually since then. ATRA resumed responsibility and has deemed the month of February as Therapeutic Recreation Month. If you haven’t planned anything yet. I have some goodies that will make celebrating this month, easy peasy.

New Valentine's Day Puzzles and Activities

In this free zipped folder, I share some fun Valentine-themed activity worksheets. This bundle includes 8 activities: 2 word search puzzles, 2 word scrambles, fill in the blank love songs, love affirmations, how to say I love you and love quotes! Just download and print!

Click here to get started!

Since February is the month that most couples get engaged, host an engagement party. Set this up just like you do your wedding in June and by the way you could even have a wedding celebration at the end of February or on Valentine’s Day to change things up a bit. Lots of couples get engaged or married on Valentine’s Day than any other holiday month.

Learn & Listen – Discuss with your residents how they became engaged.

Do they remember how they proposed or how they were proposed to?

Where were they, in a park, at home, in a restaurant or their special dating place?

Did they have something funny happen during the proposal?

Let them open up and reflex on this special time in their life.

Food – Anything chocolate! You could have residents make small chocolate boxes to put a candy ring in. For each resident you will need: 3 Hersey chocolate bars or chocolate, graham crackers, icing paste (this is just a very thick icing, however you can also use can icing)
and candy rings. Break chocolate bars (or graham crackers) in half and form into a box using the icing paste to hold the pieces together. Remember to lay one half down for the box bottom and four pieces for the sides. Put the candy ring inside the box and set the last half on top as the lid. You can have them decorate the top with icing and sprinkles too before putting it on top.

Exercise – Get your residents ready to dance the evening away. Lead them through some stretches and then lead them through some easy slow dances to prepare them for the engagement party.

Craft – Let the residents help make and decorate the engagement party decorations. Make large hearts (red and pink) out of construction paper. Add something special to the hearts by layering them with lace paper hearts or let the residents get creative on their own by adding glitter, lace, feathers, etc., whatever you have in supply to decorate the hearts. You can also make large engagement rings or any other item that might be used at an engagement party (black box, flowers, boxed candy, candles, wine bottles, wine glasses, etc).

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