At James’ Place Basingstoke we provide members with exciting new opportunities and experiences which can help develop their social and life skills, and overall build their self-confidence. With this in mind, as a team we have put together and created a fun-packed month which is both stimulating and engaging for a variety of capabilities. This month the members have shown great knowledge, determination, teamwork, and friendship, we couldn’t be prouder of all that they have achieved!
Autism Awareness
On Tuesday 2nd April we celebrated ‘World Autism Awareness Day’, the colour blue is a symbol of acceptance and kindness, as well as a declaration of support. As a team we wanted to spread awareness and show our support by wearing the colour blue and creating our own art pieces to celebrate the day. The members enjoyed creating and decorating their autistic pride symbols using material such as tissue paper, mosaic pieces, feathers, and glitter. We believe that everyone should feel accepted and celebrated for who they are.
Becoming Social Butterflies
‘Nothing is impossible. The word itself says “I’m possible”’ – Audrey Hepburn
To help members to develop their teamwork and social skills we worked as a group to create our very own escape room. The members had to work together to solve the case of “Who has eaten Ezri birthday cake?” they were given a variety of mind-muddling mystery clues which they had to find the answer to as a team to reveal who was the greedy JP thief. Some of the clues involved shining a torch to reveal a secret message, popping balloons to discover the hidden key, digging around in the sand pit to locate the next riddle, dissolving bath bombs, and having the nerve to put your hand into the unknown. The members were thrilled and worked incredibly hard to solve the riddles and crack the case. Let’s just hope that we don’t get another peckish bandit on our hands….
At the beginning of the month, we also invited our lovely friends from Dashwood Manor Care home over for an afternoon tea and tea dance. The members worked incredibly hard to make delicious treats and tasty snacks for everyone. Each group was allocated a task to complete to help set up for the afternoon, these tasks consisted of making homemade sausage rolls, scones, cheese and bacon quiches, and flower arrangements for the table centre pieces. The tea dance was a great success! Everyone had a great time socialising, laughing, dancing, and most of all eating. We plan to have Dashwood over again in the near future. What a lot of party animals!
That Ancient History
“What has ‘The Romans’ ever done for us!” – Life of Brian (Monty Python)
At James’ Place we think that it is really important for members to learn and engage about history and how it has shaped the world we know today. Roman history is very important because it has advanced many areas of technology and science, establishing methods and tool to which we use now. We wanted to educate members in the variety of inventions created by the Roman, such as postal service, roads, newspapers, and the Julian calendar. We also went to the ‘Willis Museum’ located in Basingstoke, which was displaying an exhibition called “Becoming a Roman”. This exhibition displayed relics and artefacts which were from the Silchester Dig. The members were fascinated by how old the artefacts were and used this inspiration to make their very own at JP.
What a great month full of new experience and achievements, on to the next!
