South Shore Villa, Crapaud, June 2011
Well some days, we have hint of summer weather and we get outside for walks to enjoy the beautiful setting of the Villa. The residents never take it for granted and enjoy our nature walks and the ease with which we can get out among the trees and birds sounds of summer. And then we have rain and cold and we stay inside. We are still having a grand time with our ball games. We call it Boomerang Ball. We have graduated from tossing one ball back and forth to having three balls in play and today we had at least six balls flying around. It looks like fun and it is fun, even the staff come in to join us and get in the action
Once a month we have arts and crafts on the calendar. This mostly involves paint and paper and an idea. We are fortunate to have some nice brushes which we acquired when we had a LEAP grant here a few years back. This week we did a simple tree study with reflections. It is accomplished by folding the paper in half length wise, painting an image in the top section and then while the paint is still wet folding it over to make a mono print on the lower part of the fold. And voila you have a nice suggestion of the trees reflected on water. Last month we painted mandalas. I down loaded a mandala from the internet and printed them off onto heavy paper using our photocopier. The residents found it relaxing and enjoyed the colourful product. That photocopier is a wonderful tool for facilitating art projects. It’s amazing what the seniors can do in spite of their self doubt.
We have continued on with our rhythm band project. Originally I thought we would acquire some drums but now we are playing around with spoons. It’s an instrument the residents are familiar with and I think they can do it. It’s just a question of breaking it down into simple steps. Enjoying rhythm must be a fundamental pleasure like laughter and sunlight. We did the ground work over the winter by learning a few simple paradiddles and we can now incorporate them into playing the spoons. Wish us luck
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Regards
