❦ Service and Creativity in Alzheimer's ❦

❦ Service and Creativity in Alzheimer's ❦

So, two weeks ago, we sat down with the 6th grade kids and discussed their opinions of their visit to the Alzheimer's center. We debriefed on what happened and, after brainstorming and reflecting on the events of the previous week, we gave the class over to Ms. Lenk (our supervisor at the moment). She came up with the great idea to have the kids write 6-word-stories about their experience. We did this to identify areas of weakness and of strengths. For those of you that are interested, a 6-word-story basically gets people to write their feeling and thoughts about a situation in exactly six words. The kids were asked to write six words each about one challenge during the visit, one fun thing, and one thing they learned.

Here are 5 of the best, most awesome, hilarious, and sometimes concerning responses that we got from the kids when we collected in and read what they wrote. The pictures are all the authors own and any sentences/words written in brackets are basically my running commentary). Here's hoping you have as much fun reading them as we did!

" Two ladies did not speak English.
I got to watch her paint.
The Alzheimer's lady painted very well. "

(how sweet) 

" The man could not hear me.
I liked playing carom with them.
The center is a nice place. "

(not bad)

" First I thought she was dead.
It was fun playing carom board.
People enjoy while suffering from Alzheimer's. "

(I'm not sure what to say...)

" They would sometimes talking without speaking.
We painted with cool water colours.
Always be nice no matter anything. "

(the first one is a bit fishy but nice overall)

" They would not talk to me.
We played carom with a gang.
They like to talk to people. "

(one and three contradict each other)

 On another note, for the creativity section of the service, we planned and initiated and activity where we got the kids make the Alzheimer's patients Christmas cards for the coming holidays. They were told to design the cards, colour them in and write a warm message inside them and finally sign them with their names. I unfortunately don't have the pictures as they're still in a WIP (work in progress) but I'll get them asap. It was quite fun because we too made some cards for the patients. We also told the kids that if they weren't Christians or particularly religious they could simply have 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas' which shows consideration of ethical issues,