We hope that everybody had a lovely Christmas!
We have returned back to Andover James’s Place and have lots of exciting plans which will be taking place this year!
We have started the month off with the theme ‘New Year’, Wendy and Sharne organised a brilliant day creating our own ‘Jammy Dodger inspired biscuits, they looked and tasted fabulous!
We also created a board in the craft room with everybody’s new year wishes, all of us individually created our own leaf with a wish attached to hang on the tree. We have started our first week back by visiting the village pub, enjoying a short walk in the fresh air, games and discussing everybody’s memories over Christmas. We created our own craft ‘toast’ using different materials symbolising the new year beginning .
Our second week was themed ‘nature in winter’. We have created Pom Pom penguins, snow globes, baked truffles and a yummy school cake with an Arctic theme using arctic animals and white chocolate as snow.
We have been keeping warm and improving our fitness levels by playing Just Dance on the projector and Chair Yoga at the end of the day, we have been loving it!
We had a fabulous week based on the theme ‘memories and nostalgia’. All the members created crafts and activities based on memories from their child hood, such as care bear painting, dream catchers and Memory box’s. The members all filled out a chart which was an ‘all about me’ worksheet, we all discussed what we had wrote, communicating with each other, remembering things from the past, holidays they have enjoyed and memories they love. It was a great activity , we will definitely be doing it again in the future. We also used different methods of printing such as using a Tea bag on top of black and white portraits, finishing off with adding a handmade frame with different craft resources.
We have been setting up different sensory activities in the hall, we experimented using ‘jelly bath kit’ and ‘orbies’. This was an extremely fun activity which had the room filled with lots of laughter and smiles. The members loved the textures of the jelly, the bright colours and enjoyed mixing everything together and playing with it!
Our members have started adding their talented art skills to the craft room walls, a few people have been beautifully painting a floral mural on the wall which is coming together wonderfully. Hard work, fine motor skills and great effort has been put into it, we look forward to sharing photos when they have completed it!
Our burns night themed week included painting highland cows, thistle inspired weaving, traditional music and lots of baking. The members baked fudge, shortbread biscuits and a lovely raspberry oat pudding!
We ended the month with The Chinese New Year, it was great! Sessions took place during this week such as dragon themed hats, cooked and tried Chinese food and created cherry blossom inspired cocktails and lots more!
Over January we have been having visits from our friends at Basingstoke and Eastleigh James’s Place. We have started a lunch club where we all come together and help prepare a cooked meal for our lunch! The members have been loving going to the shops to purchase the ingredients to then help each other measure and create the recipe! They have made vegetable stir fry, spaghetti bolognaise and sausage and mash with vegetables this month! We also visited Eastleigh Location for lunch club. Everybody loved socialising with their friends there and looking round their location to see what they have been creating and displaying in the unit. Life skills such as interaction, communication and reading are being used throughout lunch munch club!
All the JP locations attended a trip to a nightclub in Southampton, everybody had so much fun! We all met our friends from Eastleigh and Basingstoke JP and enjoyed purchasing a drink and dancing to some great tunes!
We have been busy finishing our new sensory room, it is looking absolutely amazing and everybody is so excited to see it in February when it is completed.
We are looking forward to more great days ahead and trips next month!
