The Memory Project: Storytelling through visual arts, theater & puppetry

  Bensonhurst Senior Center Blog  10  4/21/22 Flowers & Family Tree Did you know there are specific warm up exercises for gamers? Well, many of them are just the ticket for our students who are using their fingers, hands, and wrists to create beautiful folding paper art. We began with opposition finger taps then finger abductions with closed and open fingers. We then put our palms together and separated our fingers followed by single finger circles. This is a challenging exercise, and everyone does what she can at her own pace. Carpal tunnel is a painful condition so to help avoid this we practiced a carpal squeeze activity with wide palm extension. Finally, we exercised our wrists. This is the final class of our “Flowers & Family Tree” program, so we wanted to ensure the bouquet was completed. Our students made 6 flowers, each with 5 petals, for homework and now glued each flower together. Next, they threaded a bead onto the wire and poked it through the center o...

  Bensonhurst Senior Center Blog  9  4/14/22 Flowers & Family Tree Keeping physically active is not a problem for our wonderful seniors, so we incorporated a movement activity with partnering for this morning’s warm up. “On the Nose” requires a leader and partner and for everyone to stand. The leader can only move her hand and the follower must imagine there is a string attached directly from their nose to the leader’s hand. The leader tries to make the follower move in ways they haven’t seen before. A couple of our brave seniors took the lead and had us all following, bending our bodies in line with our nose’s lead! As usual our students excelled in creating their sunflower wall hangings and we screen shared their work for comment. Jing Wei placed a photo of her daughter inside a red heart, balanced within wide stripes of complimentary colored and textured paper. Her message is written across bold yellow, softened by red scalloped edging. Julisa created a giant birth...

  Bensonhurst Senior Center Blog  8  4/7/22 Flowers & Family Tree Our seniors are excelling at making paper flowers. They decorate the Family Tree “growing” from the branches adding color and beauty to the ornaments already hanging there. Last week they made magnificent sunflowers in a variety of colors, which await mounting. So Sim, as usual, went a step further and crocheted sunflowers. Memory games are fun, so we warmed up our brains this morning by memorizing 6 items on a tray, revealed for 10 seconds, before being covered again. Our clever students had no difficulty in recounting what they saw even after 3 different rounds! We posed the question, “Who would you give your sunflower to?” and “Why?”. As they pondered this, they collected the necessary materials, cardboard, decorative paper, string or ribbon, glue stick and hot glue gun, paper for writing a message and/or a photo. The cardboard was covered with the chosen paper and used as the base for the plaque. Ri...