This article features 8 fun and easy craft ideas for seniors that encourage creativity, relaxation, and self-expression. From handmade cards and glassware painting to knitting and soap making, these projects promote fine motor skills, boost mood, and create opportunities for social connection. Seasons Retirement Communities encourages residents to explore new hobbies and share their talents through creative workshops and group activities.
What you’ll learn:
Retirement offers older adults an excellent opportunity to have fun, create memories with their family and friends, or even take up a new hobby. Tapping into their creative side and crafting is one way to put their increased free time to good use.
Whether painting, knitting, scrapbooking or something else, crafting can help create a greater sense of purpose for older people. It allows them to express themselves in new ways and has been shown to boost mood, among other benefits.
At Seasons Retirement, we encourage our residents to find new interests and pursue their newly-found passion. We offer a monthly activity calendar which often includes crafting. Sometimes, we even encourage residents to lead workshops based on their talents.
In this article, we’ve curated a list of fun and exciting crafts for seniors, and they include:
Keeping in touch with friends and family has become easier over the last few decades. So, it shouldn’t be any trouble for older adults to stay connected with their loved ones through social media and phone calls. Nevertheless, your parents or grandparents can make a special gesture by posting greeting cards to their friends or relatives.
They don’t have to break the bank to purchase these cards. Instead, they can connect to their creative side and craft greeting cards from readily available materials like colourful paper, ribbon and stickers. They could even create their own art on the cover or inside using whichever medium they prefer.
String art, also known as pin-and-thread art, is an exciting art form that appeals to both professional artists and beginners.
From simple artistic decorations to colourful and sophisticated crafts, older people can create any design they like.
If your older loved one has an affinity for knitting but, for some reason, cannot engage in the craft anymore, string art is the ideal creative activity to replace it. It’s also something they can do with their grandchildren or other loved ones.
It might interest your loved one in knowing that painting on a canvas only limits their creativity. Painting glassware can be a fun new challenge and an opportunity to simultaneously create something functional but beautiful.
All they would need to decorate a piece of glassware is a container of acrylic paint and their brushes. And if abstract art is not your older loved style of choice, they can always choose to place an existing art design under the glass and recreate the patterns on the material.
Cooking is often seen as an essential skill, but baking can take patience and practice. Like crafting for seniors, baking is an activity where you express your creativity and, in this case, unique taste when choosing what to make and how to decorate it.
You can enroll your parents or grandparents in a cooking class to learn how to make different pastries like pies, croissants, tarts, and so on. These skills can also be handy when celebrating special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries or other events with friends and family.
Moreover, there are several physical health and therapeutic benefits attached to cooking. So, when your older loved ones cook something special for everyone to enjoy, you can be sure they will feel good about themselves.
We all love to have fun and enjoy making memories, and what makes them even more special is being able to preserve them.
Now, while keeping memories these days has become easier with technology, image hardcopies and illustrations still hold more sentimental value.
Your loved ones can try creating beautiful frames to hold their photos and decorate their space. Cardboard, construction paper or wood, and decorations like beads or artificial flowers are common materials for seniors to make a frame at home.
If your parents or grandparents need a way around making their first handmade frames, the internet is an excellent place to gather the latest craft ideas for seniors.
As with experimenting with their artistic skill on glass, older people can also try beautifying a natural stone with paint. They can try their hand at glass or stone pebbles – these stones are excellent art materials.
Now, while your loved ones can paint on a glass pebble with acrylic paint and glitter directly, it might be tricky to do the same on a new stone pebble. To paint on such a surface, they should prepare the stone surface with latex paint, as it is less likely to wash off.
Moreover, latex paint will make the stone pebble water resistant, turning it into perfect ornaments for your older relative’s aquarium or water jar.
In any case, drawing colourful patterns on natural stones is a terrific way for older adults to get creative. They can even use them to add colour to their indoor or outdoor gardens.
Making natural skincare products is one of the easy crafts for seniors. They will need basic supplies to get started, including certain oils, colourants and fragrances. As a beginner, ensure they find a complete list of ingredients and a how-to guide before starting.
If your loved one is inexperienced, they should try the melt and pour technique. It is the most straightforward soap-making process, including the hot and cold design and the re-batching method.
Knitwears are pretty popular these days because of their beauty and convenience. That said, knitting is not limited to making trendy outfits; your older loved ones can also create household items like woollen mats and sofa covers.
Interestingly, older adults can use their knitting skills to create homemade products and put them up for sale at a local store or online. This could even help them earn extra income and feel good about themselves.
If your parents or grandparents want to hone their knitting skills, they can sign up at a knitting club. It also offers an opportunity to socialize and interact with like-minded individuals.
Above is a list of exciting and fun crafts for seniors. So, if your older loved one wants to connect to their creative side, engaging in some of the art mentioned above is an excellent way to start.
