While the holiday season is filled with fun and festivities, the bad winter weather can follow often means that people stay indoors and avoid treacherous travel. Even if they have a home care provider to drive them around, sometimes it’s wiser to cancel any travel plans and stay safely inside. If your aging loved one is homebound due to weather and seems a little restless or bored, it may be a challenge to find things to do to occupy their time.

It’s important for seniors to find challenging and interesting activities when they are homebound, whether it’s bad winter weather or not. If they are not active and engaged, it can lead to conditions like low self-esteem, loneliness, isolation and depression. Of course, family caregivers and home care providers play a big part in creating a workable schedule of indoor winter activities for elderly adults.

Here are 13 things that seniors can do on a bad weather day on their own, with a family caregiver or with a home care provider.

• Exercise indoors: Whether it’s tai chi, yoga or chair aerobics, few things get the heart racing as indoor exercises.
• Mind challenges: With everything from crossword puzzles, indoor coloring, math games and trivia quizzes online, there are plenty of ways to keep the brain active during winter weather.
• Crank up the music: Most people enjoy music, and a gray winter day is the ideal time to put on some favorite tunes and even dance around a little.
• Capture memories: As the home care provider to help the senior record themselves talking about childhood memories or other special times in their lives.
• Photos and journals: Create or organize photos into an album or journal with detailed captions for posterity.
• Video games: Not just for kids, many elderly adults are finding that video games can be fun and engaging, especially puzzle-solving types.
• Tune in: With thousands of podcasts available for downloading, seniors can tune into all kinds of audio shows on topics ranging from news, comedy and mystery to history, how-to and health.
• Online education: Elderly adults can sign up for free online classes or “attend” a university lecture series on their favorite topics.
• Movie marathon: Choose a famous actor, director or genre and hold a thoughtful movie marathon to get to know the work better.
• Crafting: From models to knitting to painting, there are a number of crafts that can quickly fill up an empty afternoon.
• Birdwatching: Millions of people across the country put out winter bird feeders and then sit in their warm homes to see what kinds of birds arrive for a meal.
• Card campaign: Seniors can join a greeting card campaign to send best wishes to service members or hospitalized children.
• Board games and puzzles: With a family caregiver or home care provider, seniors can enjoy socialization, competition and silliness when they do something fun together like a puzzle or play a board game.

If you or an aging loved one are considering home care services in Fairfax, VA, please contact the caring staff at Assisting Hands today. (703) 982-0050.