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Are you looking for another fun little-known holiday to celebrate in June? Then I know you’ll want to add National Camera Day to your activity calendar for June 29.
Here are a few activities your residents are sure to enjoy:
Host a guest speaker
- These days, many residents come into the nursing home armed with their smartphone cameras. Contact a local cell phone carrier and ask for someone to come in and teach your residents how to take the best possible photos using their phones.
- Invite a professional photographer to share tips for taking terrific pictures using a regular camera.
- Food always tastes better when it looks appetizing. Invite a chef to come in and demonstrate how professional chefs create visually appealing food. Next, offer residents an opportunity to design their own appetizer, snack, or dessert.
- Ask someone from a museum to talk about how cameras have changed over the decades. Better yet, go on an outing to a museum and check out the vintage camera displays.
Include families
Invite family members to come in and make photo scrapbooks with (or for) their loved ones. You provide the supplies, and families bring the pictures. (Be sure they bring copies if the photos are precious and irreplaceable.)
Themed scrapbooks are another option. For example, a farmer might enjoy looking at pictures of farm equipment, or a gardener might enjoy pictures of flowers. This works especially well for memory care centers.
Snap lots of pictures
Be sure to take lots of pictures of residents and staff on National Camera Day. Take residents for a walk through the facility and create fun poses. They can be serious or silly.
I think every nursing home needs an instant camera. While common in the 60s and 70s, they lost popularity for quite a few years. Now they’re back and the quality is better than ever.
The nice thing about an instant camera is that you can post photos right away after a special resident activity or event. Also, a resident gets an instant copy of a photo taken when family and friends come to visit.
Enjoy a science project
For a fun educational activity, help your residents make a pinhole camera. You can find the directions here. And yes, you can still find the traditional camera film you need on Amazon.
Unless you’re an expert, I suggest you take the film to a store to get it developed. You can still find big box stores, photography shops, and drugstores that develop traditional film. If you decide to do this project with your residents, I would love to see the photographs you create!
Share stories
Invite residents to take part in a show-and-tell activity where they share a photo and the story behind it. For example, it could be an unusual photo, a favorite picture of someone they love, or a humorous shot.
While you’re at it, share some trivia. Here you can find 101 interesting facts about the history of photography. Also, ask your residents if they remember when:
- You had to attach either a flashbulb or a flashcube to your camera when taking pictures in darker areas.
- Film came in different speeds depending on what type of pictures you were taking (ISO 200, 400, 800, etc.).
- You took your film to a store and waited several days to get it developed.
- People often made family vacation photos into slides so you could watch a slide show using a projector.
- You could look at pictures through a View-Master.
Include the kids
If you have a children’s center at your facility, ask the kids to join your residents for an activity. Then teach them the silly song entitled “Say Cheese!” And, of course, you’ll want to get a few photos of the residents and kids having fun together.
You can find many other creative activity ideas on my new little-known holiday page!
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