Five Suggestions for Craft Activities
Handicrafts offer a wide range of benefits, from improving motor skills and relieving stress to reducing the risk of cognitive impairment.
Flower Pressing
Regular walks have numerous health benefits and this simple but rewarding hobby can tie in nicely with nature walks. Any flowers you pick on your walk can be preserved for decoration through flower pressing. Simply place the flowers between two sheets of wax paper and lay a hardback book or other heavy object on top of them overnight. Once flat, the flowers can be laminated and/or used for decoration on cards, bookmarks, and other simple objects.
Needlecrafts
Among the most popular craft activities are needlecrafts, ranging from knitting to crochet, embroidery, quilting, and more. Most needlecrafts can be done from the comfort of an armchair, and the required equipment and materials are generally inexpensive, making them highly accessible for older people. If you haven’t given needlecraft a try, there’s a wide variety of different projects and styles. Indeed, needlecraft can also be a great social activity, as community knitting groups are relatively common.
Rock Tumbling
Similar in some ways to flower pressing, rock tumbling is another hobby which can be combined with regular walks. With little more than a tumbler and a few basic materials, you can turn a handful of pebbles collected on an afternoon stroll into polished, decorative gemstones. These can then be used for a wide range of other crafts or displayed as decorations. Since the tumbler does all the hard work of grinding and polishing, this is an easy hobby to pick up, unlike other handicrafts which may require tools and hard graft.
Scrapbooking
Scrapbooking is an excellent craft activity which can be particularly beneficial for memory. Scrapbooks are perfect for saving and preserving old photographs and mementos which might otherwise be stored away and forgotten about, as well as for reminiscing, and working on a craft project at the same time. There are plenty of inexpensive scrapbooking materials, making it easily accessible, and it can also be a great social activity for friends and family.
Terrarium Gardening
We highly recommend gardening as a healthy activity for older adults, but not everybody has the luxury of an outside garden. Fortunately, terrarium gardening is a great way to introduce some greenery into an indoor space. These miniature, decorative gardens can be created in containers as simple as an empty glass jar, and offer a way to keep green thumbs active even if outdoor gardening is no longer possible.
