Family Connection
Dementia Activities for Scottsdale Families
A free resource from Sweetwater Groves Residential Assisted Living — Scottsdale, Arizona.
10–30 minutesLast updated 2026-07-29
If you are looking for something to do with your mother, your father, your husband, your wife — something that fills an afternoon without frustrating either of you — you are already doing the hard, loving work. Most families arrive here after a long stretch of trying. The television is on and no one is watching it. Conversation loops back to the same question. The hours between lunch and dinner stretch out.
Here is what we want you to know before anything else: the goal of an activity is not to improve memory. It is not a test, and it is not therapy you have to administer correctly. The goal is a good twenty minutes. That is a complete success, and it is enough.
Everything in the Memory Studio is free, printable, and built around that one idea.
There is a free printable sheet at the bottom of this page — no signup, nothing to buy.
Jump to the printableStart with the time of day, not the activity
Most families choose an activity first and then wonder why it went badly. Try it the other way around. A person living with dementia usually has one part of the day when they are most themselves — often mid-morning, after breakfast and before fatigue sets in. That is your window.
Late afternoon is different. Restlessness, pacing, and a rising urgency to 'go home' are common as light changes. That is not the moment for a card game. That is the moment for something in the hands: folding warm towels, sorting buttons, a familiar song.
- •Mid-morning — conversation, reminiscence, photographs, gentle games
- •After lunch — something in the hands, quiet and repetitive
- •Late afternoon — sensory and rhythmic: music, folding, texture, walking
- •Evening — low light, low stimulation, one familiar thing
Five rules that make almost any activity work
- •No wrong answers. Never correct a memory. If 1962 is where they are, go to 1962 with them.
- •One instruction at a time, said once, then wait. Silence is not failure — processing takes longer.
- •Adult materials only. Real photographs, real tools, real music. Nothing that looks like it came from a children's classroom.
- •Stop early. End while it is still going well, not when it falls apart.
- •Let them lead. If sorting the napkins becomes the activity, sorting the napkins is the activity.
What to do when it doesn't work
It will not work sometimes. An activity that was perfect on Tuesday will land badly on Thursday, and there is often no reason you can find. That is dementia, not a mistake you made.
When it stops working, stop. Put on music. Sit down beside them. Presence without an agenda is its own activity, and on the hard days it is the only one that matters.
Ideas that fit a Scottsdale afternoon
Living with dementia in the Valley has its own rhythm. Our summers keep people indoors from May through September, which is exactly when the afternoons get longest. Our winters are the opposite gift — November through March, the courtyard is the best room in the house.
- •Winter mornings outdoors — a shaded patio, citrus in the air, birds at a feeder. Twenty minutes outside changes the whole day.
- •Summer indoors — plan for the 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. stretch specifically. That is when heat, closed blinds, and restlessness meet.
- •Monsoon watching — the July and August storms are a genuine event. Sitting at a window watching the sky turn is a real, absorbing activity.
- •Scottsdale memory prompts — Old Town, the Scottsdale Civic Center, McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, the fountain at Fountain Hills, spring training games, the Desert Botanical Garden. For long-time residents these open doors that recent memory can't.
- •Snowbird season — for the many Valley families whose relatives wintered here for decades, ask about the drive out, the first winter, who else came.
More for Valley families: memory care in Scottsdale, memory support in a residential home, and assisted living near Paradise Valley.
Scottsdale, AZ
Free printable
The Scottsdale Starter Sheet
The Scottsdale Starter Sheet
Print this and keep it on the refrigerator. Ten things to try, arranged by time of day — so on a hard afternoon you do not have to think of something.
Morning (best window)
- Look through one photo album — five photos, not fifty
- Ask about a place, not a date: "Tell me about that house."
- Sit outside with coffee for twenty minutes (Nov–Mar)
- Fold laundry together, talking while hands are busy
After lunch
- Sort coins, buttons, playing cards, or silverware
- Play music from when they were 18–25 and let it run
- Water plants, one at a time
Late afternoon (the hard hours)
- Warm towels from the dryer — fold them together
- A hand massage with unscented lotion
- Walk the hallway or the driveway, no destination
- Watch the sky, the birds, or the street from one good chair
If nothing is working
- Stop. Turn the lights down.
- Sit beside them. Don't ask questions.
- Put on one song they know.
- That counts. That is the activity.
Free printable worksheets
Sheets that go with this activity
Each one is tagged by stage, so you can pick the version that fits where your loved one is today. Large print, thick outlines, answer key on its own page.