Luau Café—a café filled with leis, pink flamingos, and ukulele music
The Luau Café contains activities for a large or small group of people with dementia or Alzheimer's at a memory cafe, in an instutional setting, or at home with a small or large family consisting of people of all ages.
Special Guest
Lena Syed, the daughter of one of our GLSS coworkers came to the café and played a few songs on the ukulele for our guests. You can see if you can find someone who would be willing to play live at your cafe.
Supplies
Other supplies:
About Supplies:
Shopping links are provided by Amazon, which makes it easy to see the type of product that we are talking about. Clicking any of the links will take you to Amazon. Please note that the Caregiver Program collects fees from Amazon for referring users if they purchase there. We use 100% of these fees to fund our Caregiver Program, including this website and our caregiver apps. You also can purchase any of these products at local shops as well.
Snacks
We usually incorporate a themed snack whenever it is possible or if it applies.
This month featured:
We also had our regular spread which consists of:
- Coffee, tea and water
- Crackers, cheese, fruit, pastry
- Consider the time of your café, and any safety and dietary restrictions that may apply to your particular group.
Music Playlists
This month we featured background music that had a beach theme. The song titles are available in this Youtube Playlist.
Participation
Invite your guests to wear the leis provided. If you have enough time and have a regular guest list, you can ask them to wear a Hawaiian shirt or grass skirt if they have one.
Structure
Lena Syed, the daughter of one of our GLSS coworkers started the event and played a few songs on the ukulele for our guests. A crowd favorite was when she played “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”
Next we brought out the craft supplies we purchased from Michaels but they are also available through Amazon if you don't have a craft store close by. They were small wooden anchors and hibiscus flowers. Each guest was allowed to choose an anchor or a flower to paint it.
Following the craft we got everyone on their feet to play Flamingo Ring Toss. For this game we placed two plastic flamingos in white plastic buckets filled with sand. The sand helped the flamingos to stand upright, and we placed purple cellophane around the buckets so they looked more festive. We set a line on the floor and gave each person three rings to try their luck of landing it around the flamingo’s head. I would recommend using larger rings than medium. The size we purchased off Amazon was a bit small and made the game more challenging. We included a larger size as well in the supply list. Despite the difficulty, there were a lot of laughs and we had fun.
We finished the day with Hawaii Bingo. This board featured all different Hawaii and beach related pictures. The winner received a small prize.
Following Bingo, we gave a reminder of the next month’s theme, said our goodbyes to guests and the staff began clean up.
Choice of activities statement.
Downloads
Hawaii Bingo.pdf
The Hawaii Bingo boards are made to work as a dementia-friendly activity. The boards have pictures. It also includes large cards that can be held up to help people match an image that is called to an image on the Bingo board. Print on a color printer and bring chips to have the attendees put over the blocks.
If you like the download, please tell folks about our free Caregiver App! The app helps build patience, perseverance, and peace in the caregiver.
Instructions for downloading and using the app are available at this link.
Pictures
