Structure:

Coffee, snacks and socializing.

During this time baseball related songs were playing and a slideshow of baseball pictures was shown on our IN2L machine.

Speaker story. We had a guest speaker recall her childhood experiences trying out for an all boy Little League Team. This staff member had a unique and interesting story to share. Maybe you know someone in the area who can share a story about baseball?

Guess the Peanuts. Putting peanuts in a large jar on the guests’ table, we asked them to guess how many peanuts were in the jar and write down the number they guessed. The answer was revealed at the end of the café and the winner won a small prize.

Baseball in film. We watched five short video clips that were related to baseball and played them on a projector screen using a laptop and YouTube. Videos we chose were the “Who’s on First” comedy bit by Abbot & Costello, a clip from the motion picture A League of Their Own, highlights of Ted Williams’s career, the history of Fenway Park, and a clip from the World Series win after the Red Sox broke “the curse.” After watching the videos, we asked our guests some questions such as: who had ever been to a ballgame, if anyone had ever caught a foul ball and who played baseball growing up etc.

Baseball Trivia. (You can make your own using your home teams.) We had our guests answer as a group so as not to single anyone out.You can find some quiz questions here about your local baseball team (in our case, the Red Sox.) Simply take a few quizzes in, print them out, and then choose the easier questions. 

Baseball Corn Hole. We played bean bag toss with Red Sox corn hole boards and bean bags. Rather than play a full competitive game with all of the rules and score keeping, we simply set up two boards next to each other, gave guests all four bags, and instructed them to try their luck with getting it on the board or in the hole. Everyone participated in the activity, and some participants were interested in a second try. No one seemed frustrated or defeated when we simplified the task. It also helped to give a demonstration alongside the verbal instruction.

Baseball Picture Bingo. To wrap up our café, we played Baseball Picture Bingo. Each guest had a picture bingo board in front of them and I would call out the picture while also showing them a large print out of the picture. For example, if the word was Bat, I would hold up a large picture of a bat with the word underneath it and guests would scan their board to see if they had that square. If they had what I called out, they would put a chip down and the first person to get 5 squares in a row was the winner.

Downloads:

Baseball Bingo. We did not create this baseball bingo game. However, some of our other Memory Cafe activities include bingo cards that we created, including the Flower, Luau, and Halloween Memory Cafe Activities for people with Alzheimer's and related dementias.