A great activity to get the staff and residents involved together is to host an Animal Therapy Day and friendly guessing game competition. This can be organised and run for a week or two.
How to Run this Event:
- Firstly, ask all staff in every department to bring 2 photos of their pet to work. One photo of the pet on its own and one with themselves and their beloved pet together. Make the photos at least 5 X 7.
Pets can be any animal – dogs, cats, birds, mice, pony, horses, reptiles, goldfish, chickens etc.
- Set up a display board for everyone to view and display all the photos of just the pets on their own, make sure everyone can see them easily.
- Number every photo on the board clearly. 1 to 20.
- Make a list of all pet owners and display it on the board.
- Now get residents to choose which staff member they think owns which pet.
- Print out entry forms with a list of numbers representing each pet on the board.
Ask the residents to write who they think each pet on the board belongs to.
Help residents fill out the entry forms if they need assistance.
Entry form example below.
- Organise a day to reveal which staff owns each pet. Have a special afternoon tea and make it a fun event for everyone at the reveal.
- Have prizes for the three top winners who guessed the most matches (cute soft stuffed animals). Some suggestions from Amazon below.
- Make a slideshow with all the photos of the pets and owners together to play on a big screen with nice backing music. You can also make another display board with the owners and pets together so the residents can look at it long after the activity is over.
- Staff not working on the day might be happy to bring in their pet at the end of the activity for residents to pat and cuddle.
