Residents spent the week celebrating St David’s Day, Wales and the bonus addition of Pancake Day. Residents were treated to 2 cooking clubs with live cooking. They crafted and painted as well as playing board games and testing their memory with group quizzes and white board games.
Monday morning, we started Welsh week off with a themed Quiz testing our knowledge. A group of us sipped on tea as we answered questions.
In our garden view lounge, we added to our scrapbooks and filled them with our art work, letters and photographs of the past week, chatting to one and other about the fun and memories the pictures bring back.
Honouring Wales’s rich Rugby history, our morning exercise consisted of Rugby ball games.
In the afternoon we immersed ourselves in therapeutic colouring in the day lounge.
Colouring has the ability to relax the fear centre of your brain, the amygdala. 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.
Tuesday morning, we really enjoyed the rugby ball exercise so we finished our morning exercises with a game using the foam rugby ball. Stretching and working our shoulders, upper back, biceps, chest and core.
In the day lounge we spent the morning playing floor trivial pursuit. A great floor game that combines exercise of throwing with quiz questions. A great work out for our body and mind.
Our sensory optic lights have great benefits. We use lighting, materials and sounds, all working in harmony to produce an area for those with dementia to have a positive experience that triggers a release of endorphins.
On pancake day or Shrove Tuesday, was celebrated in 3 parts. It started with mixing up the batter, cracking eggs, weighing out the flour and measuring the milk.
Our batter was then cooked live in the lounge as we watched on the smell of fresh pancakes, filled the home enticing more of us to join. It was a feast for our senses and we eagerly waiting for them to be served. Putting our orders in for personalised toppings each time.
The last and final part of our shove Tuesday celebration was the tradition of tossing or flipping.
“And every man and maide doe take their turne, And tosse their Pancakes up for feare they burne.” (Pasquil’s Palin, 1619).
We laughed a lot and had so much fun, as pancakes flipped and flopped all over the place.
Others chose to play card games in our garden view lounge as well as ball games and an afternoon of eating the pancakes with a cup of tea.
Our creative and imaginative activities team have used our Optic sensory light to imitate the reflection through a stain-glass window in the sunlight as they read passages of the bible to a lady in her room.
Wednesday morning our day lounge played one of our fabulous game giant scrabble.
Our garden view lounge completed jigsaw puzzles, others wrote letters and stories of our trips to Wales as a group and others wrote them independently. We looked through Welsh postcards of landmarks like the beautiful Tenby.
In our musical sing along session, we used the instruments as we played along to the songs. Research has shown that both listening to music and playing a musical instrument stimulates your brain and can increase your memory.
Wednesday afternoon, was perfect for small group games to be played, we chose from dominoes and grand Prix board games. Card games as well as jigsaw puzzles and happily played along together all afternoon.
A fun game of hook a duck was enjoyed in our garden view lounge. This fun fair themed game that always makes us chuckle and we spent time reminiscing about other games from the fair we enjoy and when we first visited a fun fair.
We celebrated a very special ladies’ birthday with a magical tea party and she wanted to make sure all the staff attended it with her and got a slice of her two cakes.
Thursday morning, Our Ladies and Gents here at Hill House truly enjoy having their hair done by lovely Teresa. “Getting your hair done is as good as going on holiday”- DT (resident) and we couldn’t agree more.
Thursday afternoon our flower arranging club met in the lounge and displayed this week’s floral arrangements for the home.
Friday morning was jam packed with fabulous activities, in the day lounge we started with a game of kerplunk this was followed by a group game of floor darts.
Norma the basset hound visited late morning for a pet therapy session, she waddled round enjoying all the fuss and attention. By their friendliness and non-threatening way, pets can help a dementia patient be more interactive, when sometimes they are not able to do so in social settings with others.
The daffodil is the national flower of Wales and is traditionally worn on St David’s Day, which celebrates Wales’s patron saint, David (‘Dewi sant’ in Welsh), in our garden view lounge as part of our arts and crafts club we made paper daffodils to wear.
Friday afternoon our weekly whiteboard game was Welsh themed hangman. Luckily for us the words weren’t in Welsh but word we associated with Wales and St David.
Famous Welsh faces on our regular tin-can alley game was the perfect way to spice up a traditional game on Saturday morning. We found it very funny as Charlotte Church or Sir Tom Jones rolled across the table after being struck by a ball.
We also spent time painting Welsh dragons and daffodils as part of therapeutic colouring that covers all art mediums from pencils, paint, chalk or oils.
Our day lounge we had such great fun playing floor trivial pursuit earlier in the week we wanted to play it again.
Others spent the morning chatting about the daily news and family.
We had so much enjoyment replanting daffodils and plants into our early spring planters. We turned over the soil before arranging the plants in patterns and styles in our pots.
After all the fun we tidied up ready for afternoon tea and cakes.
A large group turned up for the afternoons cooking club as we prepared to cook Welsh cakes.
We worked together to mix up the ingrediencies before combining and rolling out into cake patties. Our activities team and volunteer Irene cooked Welsh cakes live. The smell was incredible, with a dusting of sugar they were ready to eat, warm and scrumptious.
Welsh cakes are usually cooked on a bakestone and the Welsh names given to these cakes were usually based on the different regional Welsh name for the bakestone. These included pice bach, tishan lechwan or tishan ar y mân (bakestone cakes), but in English they became known generally as Welsh Cakes.
Sunday mornings weekly service was streamed from a local Methodist Church and we sung along to the popular hymn and said prays of thanks.
Our amazing kitchen team were busy on Sunday morning getting cakes baked and iced for later in the day.
We spent Sunday morning completing puzzles and engaging in therapeutic colouring along with walks in the garden and potting up more garden planters in our garden view lounge.
While gardening might not seem to be as vigorous a workout as swimming or riding a bike, it is a hearty physical activity.
Sunday afternoon we engaged in therapeutic painting; we took long walks in the garden watering the plants.
A great game of uno was played in the day lounge. To play Uno, the brain has to work at remembering the rules at each stage of the game. This is great for bolstering a better memory in everyone.
As our Welsh week drew to an end, we sat down to a Welsh Tea Party with themed cupcakes, cakes and biscuits over lots of tea and coffee and great group conversation.
