My mother never ate many sweets when we were young, and she'll often say, "Oh, I never eat sweets," which is the intro line to asking for strawberry ice cream or "a bun"..."just this once." It's kind of cute, actually, though it occasionally leads to a disagreement when she asks for ice cream 30 minutes after she finished the last one. Then she'll accuse you of lying and get into a mood.
As for activities: My mom is 90 years old, and she'll tell you that she worked most of those 90 years. She didn't watch TV, she didn't play games. She worked as a nurse full time, she looked after her kids, she cooked, cleaned house, gardened, swam, and read. Now, while she'll tell you she still reads, she obviously can't follow a sentence to the end. Nonetheless, we stocked her bookshelf with titles she'd recognize and she's very proud of these. So one of our "activities" is getting her to tell us about the book she just read. It's all made up, but she enjoys sharing. We'll also ask her medical advice. She loves this, and she's usually still right about it. When she lived with me, she enjoyed helping me clean or make dinner, though it was more about the company than the work. Again, she was easily distracted. But folding laundry is something she can do and really enjoys. I think it's the tangible accomplishment. At the home she was in prior to this one, the caretaker (an amazing woman) would give her a basket of laundry to fold, take it away when my mom was done, and bring it back a few minutes later. My mom told me that the "poor woman has so much laundry .... I'm glad I can be useful to her."
And that's my point (took a long time to get there, I know): Everyone I've met in my mom's age group wants to feel useful. As most of us do. Making meaningless* crafts, playing trivial yet frustrating games, sitting in front of a TV does little for anyone's self-esteem. (*I say meaningless, because from what I've seen, the craft is chosen by the activities director and often has no significance to the people expected to do it.)
Anyway, if you can figure out what activities made her feel good about herself when she was younger, maybe you can introduce them in some modified form.
Ok. I'm going to stop now. I just got a new computer and I keep accidentally deleting what I'm writing. Yeah, I worry about the genetic aspect of Alzheimer's sometimes.....
= new reply since forum marked as read