Woodworking and designing a game for LTCH

I have seen shuffleboard made and proposed as a game for Long Term Care Homes. We had trouble finding one of reasonable price and I figured I could make one.

Even when not socially isolated by CoVID, I have always been willing to put in an hour or two outside of work on projects for work. With CoVID, I have been trapped with naught but work friends, work and family. Family is not bad but the same three people all day every day for months can become boring.

And so I have worked on making a set of eight discs and two push poles. The triangular markings on the floor I managed with masking tape. As an LTCH Enchantment Aide, I find masking tape to be as multipurpose and valuable as others find duct tape.

I had one pole finished but, even after drilling the hole first, the wood screw split the pusher in half. Dang it all! Happily, having the experience of making the first one made construction of the second one much faster.

After some basic sanding, I screwed the set on the right together far more carefully.

I probably overthought this. I made eight discs but I knew they were all only 'mostly' round and many had differently shaped bottoms. So I wanted us to be able to make different sets easily. We can play green vs blue, 1-4 vs 5-8, or A-D vs E-H. I congratulate the excellent Jordyndickson for the lettering. I made sorta round discs and she made perfect writing.

So we had two poles, one short and meant for wheelchairs and the other long for standing players, and eight discs. The discs didn't slide well so I used bee's wax and they slid much better.

Here's a handsome guy with the long pole.

Another angle on the pole and pusher (I am sure there is a better term).

In describing another recent project - the Graduation Ceremony - my employers used this phrasing:

the creative Team at The Villa Care Centre from doing something extra special for their Students. Life Enrichment Aide, Brian, along with the Residents

In this case, Jordyn is definitely part of the 'creative Team' but the residents were also involved. I was going to arrogantly put my name on the bottom of each disc but I have never been able to take more credit than I am due. So my projects will be "VC Creatives" to honour our Creative Team.

It turned out that the short pole was not very useful and we only used the long one.

Also, even with a waxed bottom the residents couldn't push the discs far enough. We experimented with other items!

The residents under my care enjoyed the game and the experimentation as did I. I think the game will work better on the other floor where there are more who are stronger.

I have shown two activities that require a lot, I mean, A LOT of preparation. And this one took a lot more effort than one game is worth. I did learn more about wood working so my education probably makes the prep valuable for that. And we may be able to use the game on my floor and elsewhere.

Still, I wanted to finish with an activity that I thought would last 20-30 minutes and has been a consistent two hour event. And with zero preparation, really. I first called it "bird watching" but only three birds flew by. It turns out that 'window watching' is a pretty good activity! We looked out the window and commented on what we saw and about the weather and more. It was a great form of comfort to have the excuse of looking out the window for any conversational lags.

I just wanted to end with a far easier to prep activity than the previous two,