Senior Virtual Activities Kits
Take a journey without leaving where you are. The Adult Services Department has compiled an array of Virtual Activity Kits with our senior patrons in mind! These fun and interactive kits include eBooks, streaming movies, music selections, at-home crafts and virtual tours to keep you entertained at home using our eResources and Digital Collection.
Keep your eyes open for many more to come! And if you want a new virtual activity made, please email us at asdept@mapld.org.
The health benefits of dancing for seniors range from improving your physical health to creating strong social connections that increase your sense of well-being.
Dance isn’t just a social activity. It is actively used by the medical community as a form of therapy. In the 1940s, Marian Chance taught dance to traumatized veterans of World War II, helping them express their emotions and work through trauma and stress. Today, dance is used to treat conditions ranging from eating disorders to depression.
Dancing, however, does not benefit only young people. The health benefits of dancing for seniors range from improving your physical health to creating strong social connections that increase your sense of happiness and well-being.
Your Care Everywhere
Interactive Dance Routine Workouts
The perfect 15-minute dance exercise routine for older adults and seniors! (YouTube)
SENIOR DANCE FITNESS | 30 MINUTES LIVE | FIT OVER 50 | V2 (NO BREAKS) (YouTube)
Movies on Kanopy
ALIVE AND KICKING – 2017 (1hr 28 mins)
ALIVE AND KICKING showcases the dynamic culture and cathartic power of swing dancing from its historic origins to its impact today. Boiled down to its core, swing dancing is the pursuit of happiness.
TAPDANCIN’ : An All American dance Form – 1980 (58mins)
Where Europe brought the classics and the ballet to the world of dance, America brought tap to the table. In a highly entertaining overview of what is considered the first, genuinely all-American dance form, Christian Blackwood’s TAPDANCIN’ illuminates the New York driven renaissance of the once-flourishing art form.
Blackwood shows how the triumphs and defeats of many great dancers from the past were mingled with the rejuvenation of this art form by a class of talented newcomers. A series of heartwarming interviews, which shed light on the history of the discipline as well as on the racial misgivings of the entertainment world in America, are mixed with beautifully captured footage of the tap masters in action that will have you tapping your own feet along to beat.
The whimsically fast-feet and acrobatic kicks and flips of the Nicholas Brothers, Honi Coles, John Bubbles, the Copasetics, and many more tap legends, make this a film that is not only a pleasure to watch but that offers a glimpse into the past, present, and future of an authentically American art form.
Memory games for elderly adults can be not only interesting and entertaining, but can also improve memory, daily life skills, and overall mental health. To ensure that the brain works as best as it can, the mind needs to be challenged every day
Suggested Games on Super Carers
Movies on Kanopy
LET THE GAMES BEGIN! – 2013 (49 mins)
Episode 1 of The Mathematics of Games and Puzzles
Explore some general strategies for successfully solving simple games and puzzles. As you hone your skills at games and puzzles, including 20 Questions, Mastermind, Ghost, The Tower of Hanoi, variations of Tic Tac Toe, and Cram (a cross between checkers and dominoes), you’ll start seeing how mathematical ideas and concepts are essential to increasing your chances of winning.
GRANNY’S GOT GAME – 2014 (74 mins)
“GRANNY’S GOT GAME” is an inspiring look at a senior women’s basketball team in North Carolina. With a roster of players well into their seventies, these fiercely competitive women battle physical limitations, cut-throat competition, and social stigma to keep doing what they love, while overcoming the skepticism of their peers. Following the team for a yearlong season culminating in a trip to the National Senior Games Championship, this heartwarming film is an uplifting tale of overcoming life’s obstacles, proving that the love of the game is something that can be embraced at any age.
Learn chess strategies and improve your cognitive thinking with an expert chess coach. Click on the Online Resources button for access to information the basics of chess, tactics and maneuvers.
Part of the Ready, Set, Game! series
THE BIG SHOW: INSIDE ESPN’S SPORTSCENTER
by Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick
read by Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick
Inside ESPN’s Sportscenter
From World Sports Headquarters in historic Bristol, Connecticut, comes the audiobook that’s more colorful than Dennis Rodman’s hair. For the first time, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, the tag-team partners of ESPN’s award winning Sportscenter, bring what People magazine calls their “Letterman-like loopiness and Koppel-esque smarts” to listeners everywhere in THE BIG SHOW. Less expansive (and easier to get) than a big leaguer’s autograph, THE BIG SHOW gives you the honest, horrifying, yet always entertaining story of two men, three cameras, and highlights run amok. It tells truths about the sports world the government doesn’t want you to hear. Which government, nobody’s sure, but there must be a government somewhere that doesn’t want you to now about: The voodoo that Keith and Dan do to make THE BIG SHOW run slicker than Pat Riley’s “do”; Keith and Dan’s complaints about sports idiocies – and each other; What superstars, celebrities and the press really think about Dan and Keith – and how they’ve survived to this day! Listening to THE BIG SHOW, you’ll have joy, you’ll have fun, you’ll have seasons in the sun, and you’ll dismiss all notions of becoming a sportscaster yourself. But try as you may, your TV remote can’t turn them off this time, so Dan and Keith’s fragrantly illegal use of the mouth will keep you listening O-ver-time!
Research shows that art therapy can be a valuable approach for improving senior’s physical and mental health. Art therapists guide seniors using different art forms to address health imbalance by using expression and motion to help restore normal life functions.
Americare Info
Paint Along – 3 Little Birds (YouTube)
Includes materials supply list and video tutorial.
Art History Museum Tour (over the phone)
Form in Art is generously supported by The Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Art Talk: Art by Phone
Individuals who can no longer visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art due to age-related limitations or disabilities can still experience the excitement of a lively conversation about works of art on a free conference call over a regular phone line that links ten to fifteen participants with a facilitator from the museum.
Each session is approximately 45 minutes to one hour in length. There are two or three sessions in one series. Past courses have included paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Rubens, Tanner, Monet, and Rodin, as well as decorative arts and architecture from the historic houses of Fairmount Park.
The Art Talk facilitator is a Philadelphia Art Museum guide or Park House guide with many years of experience. Participants can take part in the conversation or just listen, and do not need an art background to enjoy Art Talk. Participants receive a booklet to view as they listen. The museum invites people to join the upcoming series and then enjoy an hour a week in conversation with new friends.
More information is available on this program by calling Form in Art Program Coordinator in the Office of Accessible Programs in the Museum’s Division of Education at (215) 684-7606.
For more information about the museum’s other programs for people with disabilities, please call (215) 684-7602 or for deaf callers TTY (215) 684-7600.
Street Thoma, Manager of Accessible Programs: (215) 684-7601
Marissa Clark, Coordinator of Accessible Programs: (215) 684-7602
Let There Be Light – 2015 (56 min) (Kanopy Movie)
This documentary follows the grand masters of stained glass art, artist Rowan LeCompte and craftsman Dieter Goldkuhle, as they create their last great series of windows for Washington National Cathedral (the sixth largest cathedral in the world, with more than 200 stained glass windows).
At the age of 81, Rowan was commissioned to produce what would be his last series of windows for the monumental building. This documentary chronicles the fascinating creative process, but also captures how age begins to take its toll on Rowan. Six years in the making, LET THERE BE LIGHT is told with stunningly beautiful imagery as it documents Rowan’s life-long passion, imagination and creativity in using glass and light.
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