Here’s How to Turn a Beach Ball into a Therapeutically Challenging Conversation Starter

I love this beach ball activity because it incorporates gross motor function and cognition into one intervention. It’s inexpensive, easy to create, and requires little to no equipment.

What You’ll Need:

a beach ball
a permanent marker

What You’ll Do:

use the permanent marker to write various questions all over the surface of the beach ball; I like to use a blend of get-to-know-you style questions, common or simple trivia-style questions, and some reality orientation questions

toss the beach ball back and forth to the Resident (you could also do this in a group of several Residents)
when the Resident catches the ball, ask them to read (or assist them to read) and answer the question that is immediately facing them

How You’ll Bill:

Of course it’s going to depend on a few different things, but to start, I generally like to bill this under Therapeutic Activities because of its multiple components.

If I’m strictly billing for cognition, then I will focus my note on:

why I’m addressing cognition with this Resident
how this task addresses that ‘why’
how many cues were provided
how many questions the Resident could successfully answer
the level of stimulation in the environment
and how accurate the answers were

If I’m also billing for a gross motor component to increase cognitive complexity, I will also include:

the physical position of the Resident (sitting, standing, lying in bed)
how well the Resident could execute the gross motor task
if the addition of an upgrade in position impacted cognitive performance (for example, standing increased the level of distraction and the Resident required more cues to answer the questions)
and if any loss of balance was noted