This week residents at Hill House have spent the week getting stuck into spring cleaning, polishing the silver, folding the laundry and enjoying time planting new seeds for their vegetable patch. Residents spent the evening at the races watching the Grand National on the Tv placing bets on the Hill house sweep stack for their chance to win prizes.
Monday morning, we started our week playing board games and engaged in sensory hand massages and manicures across the home.
Monday after we started a new 250-piece jigsaw puzzle called Keeping busy very apt for this week’s theme of spring cleaning. Alliteratively we helped out with odd jobs around the home, sorting photos and reminiscing about jobs we sued to do around the home.
Tuesday morning, garden view lounge spent the morning reading their daily newspapers and looking through family photo albums and sharing stories about there children growing up, others enjoyed manicures and board games.
There are many benefits of horticultural therapy, its proven that by getting your hands dirty, you’re also making your brain happy! Our gardening club meet to plant this year’s herbs and vegetables ready to go into our new planter.
After lunch and innkeeping with the spring-cleaning theme, a group of us gathered in the lounge to tackle a few cleaning tasks, we polished the silver wear from round the home, and it was truly sparkling by the time we had finished. We sorted the odd sock box into pairs helping our lovely laundry ladies.
In our garden view lounge, we love to sing and dance and one of our new favourite songs is for ever blowing bubbles and this time we had a bubble machine blowing while singing along it really made us all laugh and got everyone involved in the sing along. We completed sensory shape pictures and enjoyed visits from families throughout the afternoon.
Wednesday morning, after an energetic exercise class of balloon games, stretches and tennis games we took on this week’s picture quiz; cleaning product pictures with the brand /product fuzzed out and we had to try and name the brand / product, it was trickier than we thought it would be.
Our garden view lounge turned into a mini disco as we got up and got moving as part of our movement to music class. Research has found that dancing improves strength and muscle function in older adults, as well as increasing balance and flexibility, leading to better stability and fewer injuries.
“I can dance like you twenty-four-year-old but can you keep up”
Wednesday afternoon our group social was based around cooking, recipes we cook and things we love to bake, pancakes has been a popular cooking club activity over the last year and we were excited to follow a new pancake recipe to try it against our regular recipe, we took turns whisking and beating the mixture before watching ti be live cooked in front of us. The whole home was filled with the fresh smell of pancakes, enticing others into the lounge as the followed the smell.
Our garden view lounge spent the afternoon, polishing the bass wears. Most household chores burn calories using some of the same physical movements that you do in the gym, you can get a full-body workout, build muscle, and burn more calories while you tidy up your home and doing activities of daily living chores.
Thursday morning, we welcomed our in house hairdresser and spent a lot of the morning getting pampered. Others played games on the magic table, splatting and making music using the different apps.
We created this month’s photo collage for the display board in the lounge, cutting and sticking down a mixture of activity photos. Followed by board games and visiting families in the pod, we build up quite the appetite for lunch.
Thursday afternoon our flower arranging group met to arrange this weeks floral vases for the home.
Friday morning, we spent the morning in the court yard garden, planting new herbs and vegetables.
Gardening can Improve our mental health through a sense of purpose and achievement. The opportunity to connect with others – reducing feelings of isolation or exclusion. Acquiring new skills to improve the chances of finding employment. Just feeling better for being outside, in touch with nature and in the ‘great outdoors’.
“We cant wait to see them grow, ill be out to water them every day”.
Inside others opted to take part in solo activities, like jigsaw puzzles, therapeutic colouring or 1950’s reminiscing.
We love to help out and with it being spring cleaning week, the laundry ladies have loved having us help out with the laundry they have provided us tasks each day if we wish, and Friday we loved helping them folding flannels and bed sheets.
Friday afternoon we heard the sad news of the death of prince Philip, we spent the afternoon watching the news coverage in the lounge area, we took walks out in the garden dodging the April snow flurries.
In our garden view lounge, we took part in baking activities, we looked through cooking books and found 3 different flavour cupcakes we wanted to bake, so a quick trip to the kitchen store cupboard and we were ready to whisk up the mixtures.
Later that afternoon two of our gentleman took on staff at a dominoes knock out competition.
Saturday morning, in our garden view lounge we added photos to our scrapbooks and played table games like dominoes and cards.
An early start for some in the lounge so we started our morning with a hot cup of tea and the double dice game, a game of addition with a bingo twist.
Our group social was dominated by the sad news of prince Phillip’s passing the day before the newspapers had printed tributes and shared stories of this life, we spent the morning sharing our own stories of times we have met the Royals and how growing up with the Queen and Prince Philip being a similar age to us means we followed her and shared important life events at similar times, a bond the younger generation do not understand.
Saturday afternoon was jam packed with a mixture of fun activities, Daisy dog visit us for a pet therapy session, she loves all the treats and fuss we give her. Our magic table lets us reminiscing and we used the wipe away games to come up with all the different recipes for apples; apple pie, apple crumble, toffee apples were but a few.
Our garden view lounge loved a game of floor darts followed by hoop toss and there was much laughter between friends throughout.
Our amazing chef jade spent the afternoon one to one with us as we sampled out new milk shake flavours, and gave constructive feedback, we had 3 flavours to sample; fresh strawberry, chocolate cookie and nutty banana, 2 of them proved very popular and we can’t wait to see them at the hydration stations across the home.
Saturday evening residents and staff at Hill House relished in a wonderful afternoon at the races, they took part in this year’s Grand National sweep stake. We gathered together to watch the race live on the TV, cheering on our horses.
Two of our residents correctly picked first and second place winning prizes and trophy’s.
Sunday morning activities, included a mixture of games on the magic table using the interactive Omi system, [playing board games and spending time one to one with cares chatting and engaging in meaningful activities personal to us.
Sunday afternoon staff played guitar and we loved an afternoon of singing along.
Alliteratively we engaged in therapeutic colouring and completing our weekly scrapbooks.
