6 Mar 2017

This morning was a very active session as our theme was sports.

We started by getting everyone settled with hot drinks and biscuits before we circulated the raffle tickets and the blind card to the group.

We worked through the orientation exercises together and shared our good news stories with each other before I opened the suitcase full of indoor physical games. The volunteers were great, they took charge of indoor bowling and quoits as well as arranging tabletop games and access to iPads for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t take part.

The winner of the blind card was Andre, who won afternoon tea for two at Cafe In The Park, Billingham.

Next week we will be taking part in cognitively stimulating activities, as yet to be decided.

This afternoon at Young At Heart ULO held at the Community Hub in John Whitehead Park, Billingham we held a quoits competition between participants and volunteers.

We started with an order of hot drinks and Tunnocks Tea Cakes while we worked through the orientation exercises and chatted about what we had done since we last met. We discussed the options around the choice of activities available and the group chose to take part in a quoits competition.

Before the competition, because we had a new participant, we spent a little bit of time playing with the toss n talk ball to introduce ourselves to our newest member and so we could get to know them.

The quoits competition went really well, with June scoring the highest score of 180 points.

Next week we will be focusing on cognitive stimulation, but the activity has not yet been decided.

In Thornaby we had a last minute change of plan based on feedback from the group. The original plan had been to engage the groups in a creative writing exercise as part of the ‘Letters To Myself’ project, which asks people to write a letter to their past, present or future self. However, the group weren’t too keen on this idea so, instead, we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon playing dominoes, tiddlywinks, noughts and crosses and card games.

While the group were playing these games, I took the time to speak to them all individually to complete the hobbies and interests checklist. The checklist is a great opportunity to explore different themes and ideas for future activities and to better get to know the members.

Next week our theme will be physical games and we will be choosing from a selection of activities available.