Memory Mobile

                           

Susan is a 55 year old mother of two, who was diagnosed about 2 years ago with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS. She loves scrapbooking and playing cards with her friends and family. She struggles with muscle weakness and fatigue. People with ALS also struggle with hand- eye coordination.  This activity works on Susan's fine motor skills, her grip strength, and maintaining her hand-eye coordination, since ALS is a degenerative disease.  When asked how she thinks she has become stronger due to this activity, she said that she is now able to pick things up easier using her fingers, her hand-eye coordination has improved and that even more important to her she has something to leave behind for her family. When I asked about publishing this on the internet with her picture, she was very excited and hoped that our intervention could give someone else an idea that would help others! 





Step 1: Get a metal coffee can. The coffee can that we used was about 5 to 6 inches in diameter. The key to this step is to make sure that the size of the coffee can is appropriate for hanging things. If the can is too small you are not able to incorporate many strands hanging down.

Step 2: Get the ribbon that you are going to use to hang things on. The best length for the ribbon that we found was to between the same length of the can to 1.5 times the length.


Step 3: Determine and find the things that you want to have hanging down on the ribbons. Susan and I chose to use cards, seashells, and beads. Susan enjoys playing cards with her family and friends so we thought those would be a way that she could write notes to her family and incorporate those on her memory mobile. The seashells that she chose to use were some that she and her family found at the beach on their last family vacation.

Step 4: Choose the covering and the pictures to cover the coffee can. The pictures can be of whatever you want. Susan chose to do pictures of her family and her dog, Lola.

Step 5: Making use of the coffee can! I poked holes in the lid of the coffee can for Susan, since we needed to use an icepick to poke them. The next step was taking the background and pictures that Susan chose and gluing them to the coffee can. We decided that Susan would cut her pictures and apply the sparkle ribbons to make it more like a scrapbook page.

Step 6: The ribbons and accessories! Susan chose the sea shells and beads that she liked the most to use on her memory mobile. She said that she is the queen of her family so she made sure to incorporate the queen cards on the center strand. The other cards that she chose were the ace of hearts and ace of diamonds because they incorporated things she says to her children:
 that they are loved and more precious than diamonds. Before she glued the cards to the ribbons, Susan wrote a little note on two of them for her family. She then slid the beads onto the ribbon and glued the cards and seashells to it.

Step 7: We waited until the next therapy session to put the ribbons into the holes in the lid. I put the ribbons through the holes and Susan tore off the tape and taped the ends of the ribbons to the inside of the lid. Once that was done we were able to attach the lid to the coffee can and glue it into place so it didn't fall off.