January 2023
January was a very busy start to the year and we were delighted to welcome back some pre-Covid group members to our activity groups.
Our Billingham group, which meets every Tuesday morning from 10:30am, have been busy customising the session delivery plan to make sure each session can meet the needs of every group member. Each session now includes music, orientation exercises, discussion, games and exercise. We have played balloon tennis, Play Your Cards Right, parachute, created stop frame animations and even paired some socks! We have sang along and danced to songs from the 1960s, as requested by the group. We have talked about our favourite nights out, our preferred cakes, places we would like to visit and regularly chat about marriage and married life!
In Thornaby, we meet every Tuesday afternoon from 2pm. The group remains small and our activities remain consistent. Each week we go through our orientation exercises and chat about the many and varied social activities we have taken part in since we were last together. In January, we have been working hard on our dominoes technique as our group members are keen dominoes players. While playing, we also chat about various topics including reminiscing about local places, talking about the plight of English football, sharing stories of our lives and sharing recommendations for community activities to attend.
On Wednesday morning, we have our Musical Memories Singing Circle. We started the year with live music from Chris Gray from The Rise Up Project CIC, a new organisation that embraces the power of music for mental wellbeing. Trish returned the following week and Beth a week later and the live music is available to watch again on our YouTube channel.
In February, we are also delivering our Dementia Choir session when love is in the air on Wednesday 15th February made possible thanks to funding from The Teesside Charity. We are also sharing our love of music by launching our Virtual Sunday Singalong on Sunday 5th February. Videos will be available on the website, on YouTube, TikTok and on social media so you can watch again at a time and in a way that works best for you.
