This week across Hill House we have celebrated the power of friendship and flowers. Residents have loved spending time with friends socialising and putting the world to rights, as well as arranging stunning floral arrangements, planting sweet peas in gardening club and playing a variety of group games.
Monday morning, we welcomed Rev. Tara into the home for our monthly church service. We enjoyed playing the piano and singing hymns, it provides us with the wonderful opportunity for reflection and prayer.
The afternoon was filled with exciting opportunities to make new friends as we attended our gardening club in the day lounge, with soil bursting out of plant pots. We planted sweet pea’s ready to be transferred in the spring.
Scientists have conducted a meta-analysis that shows the impact of gardening on mental health, which includes a reduction in depression and anxiety and an increase in life satisfaction and in quality of life, an enhanced sense of community.
We are delighted to have welcomed back Laura to our garden view lounge for music therapy.
The sessions are resident led and this week after our one-to-one session’s we continued to play along with the instruments leading to some amazing group playing.
We really loved the sessions and have even given the lovely Laura some songs we would like to sing and play along with her next week.
We can’t wait to see everyone continue to blossom with the magical power of music.
Tuesday morning, we had a fun, creative time taking part in our sewing club. Using our sewing machine to stitch lavender bags as part of our Flowers and Friendship theme.
We reminisced and shared our stories about dress making and sewing over the years. As well as running through the lavender fields as children being chased by the farmer, which caused a lot of laughter.
Friendships formed over a game of draughts in the day lounge, these gentlemen battled it out on the board, engaging in conversation between turns.
In the afternoon we arranged our special flower delivery in our Garden View lounge. Flower arranging engages the senses, provides cognitive and sensory stimulation, improves motor skills, and instils a sense of independence and accomplishment.
Our friendship tea party was well attended with cakes aplenty, the conversation flowed as well as the hot drinks.
Alongside, the friendship tea party our water colour painting club, sat painting stunning nature pictures from highland cows to seaside landscape images.
Wednesday morning our arts and crafts group threaded beads to make charming friendship bracelets.
Followed by a game of snakes and ladders. The game saw us racing around the board.
In our garden view lounge, to celebrate International Flower Day we completed word search games.
The process for solving a word search is to look at the “clue” of a few letters to find a word, this activity can help seniors sharpen their reasoning skills.
In our day lounge we spent the afternoon having fun and playing games with the giant parachute. Parachute is part of our varied exercise programme; we know the best way to exercise is to have fun at the same time.
This was followed by a game of floor trivial pursuit. A game that combines our throwing skills with quiz knowledge.
In our garden view lounge, we made stunning floral picture frames as part of our art and crafts.
Thursday morning, we made lavender bags in our garden view lounge.
That afternoon we were delighted to welcome “Out of the Shadows” a band featuring a resident’s family. The resident was so happy to show off her family’s musical talents by getting up and dancing to really kick start the party.
Playing sunflower target games is a fun twist on a normal floor game and fitted perfectly with this week themed activities on Friday morning.
Our brain training morning saw us take on a flower themed picture quiz, with special guest crumble the dog. We guessed the flower before hearing facts and trivia about each flower.
We were delighted to welcome David W in to perform for us at Hill House in the afternoon. We love our live music and are so lucky to have a variety of acts perform for us.
Saturday morning, these lovely green fingered resident’s potted up and planted sweet peas, as part of our flowers & friendship week. We spent time talking about gardening and growing vegetables at home while planting up these pots ready for spring.
That afternoon, while most of us across the home spent the afternoon settled in to watch the start of the 6 Nations Rugby on our giant screens, there were lots of small group activities going on. We engaged in sensory puzzles, shape memory games and jigsaw puzzles while chatting with friends.
