Home Care in Monmouth Junction NJ

Enjoying ongoing activities with their care provider is a fantastic way to enhance your elderly loved ones’ home care relationship and support their mental and emotional health. Working on a project together helps to bond their connection and foster greater trust and enjoyment of their time together, while also offering structure and predictability to their daily routine, and something to look forward to, all of which nurture improved cognition and emotional wellness.

Creating a leaf book encourages physical activity, supports curiosity and ongoing learning, and gives your parents something that they can feel proud of and enjoy a sense of accomplishment when they finish. This project covers three seasons, offering memory skill and cognitive processing benefits across several months.

Follow these steps to create a leaf book that explores the local area, encourages learning, and acts as a journal of your parents care journey:

• Go on a leaf hunt. Have your parents’ home care provider plan a nature hunt for her and your seniors to go find leaves from trees in the area. They can head to a park, walk around the neighborhood, or just stay in their own yards and gather leaves from the trees there. Have them cut leaves directly from the branches so that they can get the best color and shape. Make sure they keep track of where they found it, maybe even taking a picture of the tree for inclusion in the book. They will repeat this hunt in the spring, summer, and fall to show the changing leaves;

• Press the leaves. Place a leaf between two pieces of wax paper. Cover with a thick paper towel or a thin kitchen towel. Press with a warm iron, moving it across the leaf with consistent pressure to melt the wax and seal the two pieces together. This will also make the paper translucent. Allow the paper to cool and then cut around the leaf with very sharp, small scissors, leaving a small margin to keep the leaf sealed between the sheets;

• Research the trees. Have the care provider go online or plan a trip to the local library or to a botanical garden learning center and research the leaves they have gathered so that they can find out what type of trees they are from, then do further research to learn as much as they can about those trees;

• Build the book. For an easy-to-assemble book, use a binder, acid-free paper, and acid-free plastic or acrylic sleeves. Use one page to record all of the information that they found out about each of the trees, including the picture of the tree if they took one and a journal entry about finding the leaves and how they feel about the trees. Glue each of the leaves to the pages and note what season it is from, put the pages in the sleeves, and arrange in the binder.

Get in touch with the elder care agency in your area to find out more about hiring a home care provider who can enjoy fun, engaging activities with your aging loved ones.

If you or an aging loved one are considering hiring home care services in Monmouth Junction, NJ or the surrounding areas, please call Independence Home Care today at 609-208-1111 for more information.