Creativity is preserved in dementia long after other abilities are lost, so that making art provides rich opportunities for meaningful engagement for people with this disease. Creative Connections(TM) in Dementia Care provides care partners with the knowledge and easy-to-follow steps they need to successfully implement art projects in a group or one-on-one setting--and no art experience is required! Written for anyone who cares for a person with dementia--family members, friends, and professionals-- this how-to guide is packed with guidance to help enhance communication, interactions, task breakdown, and problem-solving efforts while also encouraging the abilities of each participant. People with dementia enjoy valuable benefits when they actively engage in a creative activity: ? stress is reduced ? memories can be accessed ? mood and self-esteem are elevated ? a sense of personal identity and achievement is experienced To help create these opportunities, Creative Connections(TM) in Dementia Care provides 10 basic art project "recipes," detailing supplies, instructions, and activity modifications, as well as colorful, step-by-step photographs that show how to demonstrate and lead the activity for the person with dementia. Each art activity is failure-free and does not require memory skills to complete. Bring joy and a powerful sense of connection to the lives of people experiencing dementia with this one-of-a-kind guide!

Bringing art into one's life brings a sense of joy and contemplation. Art can bring even more: it can bring a sense of tranquility, empowerment, and emotional release, and it help you orient yourself within the world around you. The CREATIVITY CONNECTIONS book is designed to help you connect through artistic expression in order to promote wellness by bringing more beauty, and more appreciation for beauty, into everyday living. The creativity connections method explains how, regardless of your perceived skill or prior work in art, you can tap into your own creativity, and how you can encourage others, to explore emotions and experience. Engaging in a creative enterprise allows us to connect with our thoughts and our feelings as we contemplate not just the pictures we produce, but also our inner selves. And it enables us to connect with others as we each work on a project in a group or as we collaborate with others on a collective work. Ultimately, there is value in both the process and the product. The creativity connections approach offers a series of ideas and themes to inspire creativity. Art making can be deliberative or subliminal, with industry or without effort, with concentration or without focus. You'll learn how to interpret the work that you create, without judgment or presumption. And throughout, you'll gain insight into how the process and the product afford opportunities for self-growth. Art nurtures and sustains. It provides inspiration and solace. And it is a catalyst for connection with oneself and with others.

People who are good at creating ideas are good at seeing connections. Could teaching people to see connections be a way to help them be more creative? Over the years, there's a need for a book on creativity that complements the teaching of the creative process and tools and gives you a practical approach to how to enhance your innate ability to think creatively. This book as an opportunity to dispel the myth that creative talent is something possessed by a gifted minority. This is the opportunity to pass on 'the secret' of highly creative people to a much wider audience. It's a chance to give others the knowledge, techniques, and training they need to enhance their own innate creativity and lead the way to fun, fulfillment, invention, innovation, and change. It's a unique book that combines a very hands on and practical approach with a solid scholarly foundation.

Garden fashions continually evolve but an understanding of fundamental principles underlies all thoughtful design. So all novice garden designers and landscape contractors must make themselves familiar with the elements that constitute garden space. This book is packed with line drawings, informal sketches and sections of actual garden plans that have evolved from the Authors' wide experience. Colour photographs - many of which are linked to plans within the text - all help to enhance the principles, problems and solutions that designers will have to face. With such information in front of them, student readers will be encouraged to look, think and analyse before taking up pencil, computer mouse or spade. Already on college reading lists, this book is a must for all beginners starting out on careers as garden designers and builders.

Here is an important look at creative ways to successfully blend theoretical knowledge with skillful intervention in social group work. Theory and Practice in Social Group Work represents leading works in conceptual development that creatively connect practice with theory and also reflect the current diversity of interventions in group work practice. The book calls for more carefully articulated connections between knowledge and action and maps a strategy for strengthening social work curriculum and expanding group work practice. Some of the areas discussed include group work in medical and health settings, group work with people undergoing life cycle transitions, and group work interventions with vulnerable populations. A wide range of possibilities for applying theories in group work situations are presented in this thought-provoking volume. Some specific examples discussed include group work interventions with persons affected by the AIDS crisis and persons at high risk of contracting HIV, a group model for the management of chronic pain, group intervention services for the homeless mentally ill delivered through a mobile outreach team, a bingo group in an SRO hotel, group work with adults molested as children, and a model of practice for work with minority populations and communities.

Catechists have a lot on their plates. Teaching about the Catholic faith is not simple or easyand who knows this better than they? The best catechists have learned that ultimately all of their teaching centers around Jesus: his teachings, the sacraments, the Eucharistic liturgy, and all of our Catholic customs and traditions. These include Catholic Social Teaching. Jesus is at the heart here too, for all social teaching focuses on loving and serving others as Jesus does. Here Sr. Janet Schaeffler offers catechists creative (and fun) ways to focus on Catholic Social Teachings with those they teach (and their parents). By doing so, they are living their baptism as disciples of Jesus. And, she describes all this from A to Z, quite literally.