Anne Shadis signed up for Greg Brown’s inaugural session of Creative Craniums at Hershey’s Leader Center for Active Life to stave off senior memory loss.
“I think every older person’s nightmare is, ‘Oh my God! I’m losing my memory!’” stated Shadis, 76, of Derry Township.
Brown, a third-year MD/Ph.D. student at Penn State Hershey who plans to enter a neurology residency after graduation, designed the four-week workshop with just that goal in mind.
“The workshop is an engaging way to exercise your brain and practice cognitive flexibility, short-term memory and emotional awareness,” he said. “The goal (of Creative Craniums) is to create a sense of play and curiosity for everyone through activities like charades, improv comedy, dancing, storytelling.”
“The biggest thing is that it’s fun,” Brown said. “Brain health doesn’t have to be this difficult thing.”
In turn, participants of Brown’s initial October 2022 session noted “a significant increase in quality of life” in their post-course assessments, along with feeling increases of energy and “joy in everyday life,” Brown reported.
“I liked it all,” Shadis said. “(Brown) would start every session with a song and end it that way. The minute he started to talk, we liked him. There were no wrong answers.”
Creative Craniums is just one of many enrichment activities offered at Leader Center, an independent, nonprofit organization based in Hershey. The center welcomes individuals over age 50 to participate in its “wide range of physical exercise opportunities, games, travel, educational courses and social and volunteer opportunities.”
Founded in 1983, the organization first utilized two rooms above the Hershey Public Library, eventually moving to other venues as membership grew. Last June, the center settled into its current 9,000-square-foot home at 605 Cocoa Ave.
Safe, Fun
For Creative Craniums, the group’s first exercise, Shadis recalled, involved seniors stating what part of life they’d like to be remembered for. Further challenges involved acting out common activities like housecleaning, plus one-on-one rock/paper/scissors sequencing and group memory sequences.
“You have to keep active (at this age),” said Shadis, whose other activities at the center include zumba, scrum fitness and tap-dancing. “You have to keep doing things.”
Sharon Sterns, 74, of Derry Township, said that she signed up for Brown’s October workshop because she already was involved with the Leader Center, and the Creative Craniums course “sounded interesting.”
“It was fantastic,” Sterns said. “After the first week, I looked forward to going there every week after that. It was lots of fun, and we shared lots of laughs. At the end of the four weeks, I knew everyone there very well. Even when we see each other now, we remember things that we learned about each other there.”
Sterns said that her favorite activity at the workshop was rock/paper/scissors “because everyone did it. You felt safe and could get into the fun of it.”
She readily admitted, though, that remembering during such activities “could be difficult. I had to force my brain to work.”
Brown said that workshop participants seemed to enjoy the chance to get together and have fun again after pandemic quarantining.
“COVID caused everyone to be so isolated,” he said. “Now that we’re finally getting out of that, we can all get together again.”
Brown said that he planned to conduct a second Creative Craniums workshop round soon at the Leader Center and “hopefully keep it running after that.”
To register for upcoming Creative Craniums sessions or other Leader Center events, visit www.leaderactivelife.org or call 717-533-2002.
Other area community or senior centers interested in hosting the workshop are invited to email Brown at gbrown6@pennstatehealth.psu.edu.
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