This week Hill House celebrated the stunning country of Italy. With themed activities including pasta and pizza making, Artist inspired art classes and our sensational arm chair travel, this event as always is a big hit with the residents. They love the live demonstrations and informative videos.
Other non-themed activities include our therapy goats visiting, a variety of enticing exercise activities and brain training games.
Monday morning, we kick started our Italian week with a game Bocce Ball, we love playing group games.
(Bocce is played with eight large balls and one smaller target or object ball called a Pallina. There are four balls per team and they are made of a different colours or pattern to distinguish the balls of one team from those of the other)
Afterwards we painted artist inspired pictures, taking reference from the famous Italian artist ‘Amedeo Modigliani’. We studied the original artist painting and learnt a little about him before using paints to recreate or copy the same image.
After lunch we turned our hand to the art of pasta making, mixing the 3 ingredients together to form our dough base before using the aid of a pasta machine, we were able to easily roll thin sheets of pasta before turning it into spaghetti and tortellini.
Fresh pasta is engrained in Italy’s culture, with hundreds of different variants throughout all regions. It goes from southern Italy where usually no egg is used to Piedmont where 40 egg yolks go in 1kg of flour!
Making a product from start to finish provides us with immense satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment.
Others spent time outdoors taking walks around the homes beautifully landscaped gardens or we completed a variety of word games on the giant white board in our garden view lounge.
Tuesday morning therapeutic water colour painting was enjoyed in the lounge, while other read our daily newspapers during our coffee morning social.
Brain training games challenge our minds and increase the volume of Grey matter.
After lunch we came together to get to the boarding gate, ready to depart with Hill house airlines and jet off for an afternoon of Italian culture with Arm Chair travel.
Armchair Travel provides a sensory experience and the opportunity to learn about exotic lands and important past events in a meaningful manner.
With an inflight drinks service, a live safety demonstration, we forget at times that we are not actually on an airplane.
It’s a sight to make anyone do a double-take: A goat, hooves clicking smartly on the linoleum floor, trotting down the hallway of Hill House, we were delighted to welcome back our friendly goats on Wednesday morning. It still amazes us how much they love a soft mint sweet.
Did you know?
The founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale was advocating the benefits of pet therapy in those she treated, back in the 1800s. According to records, animal-assisted interventions have been used since as far back as the 18th Century.
As Italian week continued, this week’s cooking club saw us make mini pizza’s. Using fresh ingredients, we were able to create pizzas using a selection of toppings. The perfect way to spend an afternoon enjoying your freshly baked pizzas with friends, chatting about holiday to Italy and other exotic destinations.
We had a morning of relaxation and therapy on Thursday. We welcomed Norma the basset hound into the home for some Doggy therapy, others spent the morning being pampered by our in house hair dresser Theresa.
Flower arranging is a great weekly activity here at Hill House. We love coming together as a group and exploring the seasonal scents and flowers delivered to us by a local florist, we spent time with friends arranging them into vase trimming and cutting them down.
A game of bocce ball filled the afternoon as we competed in teams. It was a little tricky for us to get out the habit of playing floor bowls. Floor bowls is about rolling your ball accurately across the mats and Bocce is a throwing game. We soon got the hang of it and there was lots of laughter as balls went here there and everywhere.
Friday our garden view lounge was filled with a variety of different engaging activities. Some of us chose to partake in jigsaw puzzles, others spent time engrossed in Italian flag crafts and themed word searches and brain training games.
Scrapbooks were being added to in our lounge, cutting out activity photos before adding them into our books. Others shared stories from photo books made by families and loved ones with our activity team. We were all enthralled in conversations about our pasts and families.
What better way to start a Friday afternoon than, ‘Brush & Bubbles’ painting club? With a variety of art mediums on offer we choose from paints, collage or chalks before drawing out an image and decorating it while chatting with friends over a glass of wine or sherry.
Garden view lounge engaged in board games and dominoes one to one with staff. A game of balloon bounce was enjoyed by many after a stretching 0065exercise programme. Balloon bounce is always a fun way to end the exercise session.
Saturday morning started with a group game of scrabble. We were able to complete the board using every tile we had which doesn’t happen often. The last few words were made as a team.
Elsewhere in the home games of dominoes were enjoyed, and watching the last of the Olympic events on TV before tomorrow’s closing ceremony.
In the afternoon as others settled down for the weekend’s movie, we spent time with our key workers doing activities that are personalised to us. Brain training games for our resident Maths mathematician is a fab way he likes to spend his spare time.
Sunday morning a live streamed church service with singing of hymns and time for reflection lead on to a busy afternoon of floor darts and tea and coffee social across the home.
Our very happy floor dart winners.
As the rain lashed down outside, we tucked into warm, freshly baked cakes and a hot drinks. We noticed two ducks floating past on the new giant pound in the car park. These ducks were a bit different to normal one! They brought us lots of laughter and we named them Donald, Quack and Darling. Sadly the puddle didn’t last long so we rescued them and brought them in the warm.
