This week at Hill House residents channelled their inner cowboy as they celebrated international day of the cowboy. As temperatures soared, we took activities outdoors while residents dipped their feet in the paddling pool to cool down.
Monday morning, our therapeutic colouring group met. Colouring has the ability to relax the fear centre of your brain. It induces the same state as meditating by reducing the thoughts of a restless mind. This generates mindfulness and quietness, which allows your mind to get some rest after a long day.
Monday afternoon in our garden view lounges, we emerged ourselves in our scrapbooks, cutting and sticking our memories into the books.
Elsewhere, we spent time in the garden taking part in brain training white board games, linked with this weeks Wild West theme.
Tuesday morning as temperatures continued to soar, we made the most of our air-conditioned lounges and played a relaxing giant snakes & ladder floor game.
After lunch we gathered outside to dip our feet in the paddling pool. While sitting in the shade of the courtyard, we played a floating game of ring toss, followed by a group crossword puzzle.
Wednesday morning it was time to continue to add to our scrapbooks and chat with friends about our favourite activities.
Others completed table top jigsaw puzzles.
That afternoon our fantastic care partners were back and the stars they are, one spent time playing classic piano for us in the lounge while another spent time one to one engaging us in activities such as jigsaw puzzles and chatting.
Thursday morning, it was time to embrace our inner cowboy as we celebrated ‘International day of the Cowboy’ with our very own wild west shoot out. We had such a laugh as we took aim and fired our soft dart pistols onto the targets.
Followed by therapeutic colouring of cowboys and a wild west word search brain teaser, over a cup of tea or coffee.
Our afternoon started with a Visual quiz using the iPad, we answered questions on the wild west followed by music and general knowledge quizzes. Afterwards we played cards games and in the afternoon we had a tea party hosted by our director of care Jo.
Our weekly flower delivery arrived and a small group of us spent the afternoon arranging stunning floral bouquets.
In garden view we spent time working on a variety of puzzles like jigsaws or build your own cog puzzles. Studies have shown that doing puzzles can improve cognition and visual-spatial reasoning. The act of putting the pieces of a puzzle together requires concentration and improves short-term memory and problem solving.
A group jigsaw puzzle isn’t always about the completed puzzle but about working as a team and the conversations that are sparked by working together. Friday morning flew by as the conversation flowed and the puzzle grew.
After lunch a majority of us settled in with drinks and snacks as we watched the Olympic opening ceremony on TV, those of us who didn’t watch got into the Olympic spirit by painting giant Olympic rings ready for our display table next week.
After we played a game of balloon bounce as part of regular exercises, we take part in here at hill House.
We pride ourselves in celebrating outstanding contributions by staff with our Sunflower awards and it was great to see more staff receiving their awards. We are so proud of our staff and clapped along as they were rewarded.
In Saturday’s, arts and crafts club we made gold medals while we predicted how many gold medals, we believe Great Britain will win at this year’s Olympics. We painted 18 gold medals ready for the week ahead. For every gold medal won we will stick the medallists’ picture on the medal and hang it above our Olympic display table.
As a little treat for one of our care partners and his wife, our amazing activities team put out the best China and invited them for afternoon tea.
Following Sunday’s church service, we enjoyed a musical sing along with instruments.