St. Patrick's day activity for low functioning residents

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Onto St. Patrick’s Day, as promised, here are two simple activities for St Patrick’s Day for lower functioning residents.

The first activity is making oatmeal. Call it Irish oatmeal. You can use instant oatmeal. It is best that you add the hot water and let it cool before giving it to a resident.

Have a variety of food items that can be added to the oatmeal. Give each participant at least one thing to add to her oatmeal. After adding it, have her mix it.

Here are some suggestions for oatmeal mixers: Sugar or sugar substitute, green jelly, green yogurt, green jello, green sugar sprinkles, green frosting, or green dry cereal, just to name a few. If you want, you can use different flavors of oatmeal. Also if you were going to do this activity at another time, you could add other typical oatmeal mixers.

While the residents are eating or preparing the oatmeal, have some Irish songs playing. After finishing the oatmeal, the residents could have an Irish song sing along or a discussion about St Patrick’s Day trivia.

Here is another activity for the lower functioning residents. Consider this sensory activity. Get material with a special feel or color to it. Of course, green for St Patrick’s Day. Compile pairs of other sensory item for St Patrick’s Day such as: four leaf clovers, lepricons or large gold coins. Have about 20 pairs of sensory items like socks, mittens, artificial flowers, shoestrings, a picture cut in half, yarn or anything you think your residents would like to feel For more ideas go to Actually you should have the at least the number of pairs as half the number of people in the group or the same amount of pairs as people in the group depending on how you want to play the game. Separate the items into two matching piles. Put one of each item in one bag and one of each item in another bag.

Now on to how to play the game. Count the number of participants. Make sure each person will get an item or pieces of fabric. You can have two people get the same item or you have each person get a different item. If you decide to let two people get the same item, go around the room or circle, depending on how you assembled the group, to see if she can find the person who has the same item or the other half of the item as her. Give everyone a turn. After a while, the person with the other matching item will have a turn. This is especially good for low functioning residents because there is more opportunity for success. Give hints, encouragement and plenty of positive feedback. Ask how the items feel and what you might use the item for.

The other way to play the game is to give each participant a different item. Have the other matching items in a bag. After everyone has an item, have each person pick out an item from the bag. Let her see if she can find the participant who has the match to what she has picked out. Again hints encouragement and cheering make this game a lot of fun. To add a feel sensory element, you or the participant describe the item by talking about the way the item looks or feels.

As you can see, this game can be adapted to many occasions or it could just be an any day activity.