Innovative Ideas  

June 2014 Competition      

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  Thank you to everyone who entered the June 2014 competition. It was a real eye opener! Your entries included many amazing, innovative and creative ways in which you use either The Daily Sparkle or The Weekly Sparkle. We didn’t want to keep these wonderful ideas all to ourselves so we have put some together for you all to have a look at. It may inspire even more innovation! Please have a look through and see how The Sparkles are being used to bring stimulation, joy, interest and fun to your residents. Thank you all again and enjoy!

Chris & The Daily Sparkle Team

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Entry from: Oak Grange Care Home

1) We use the Daily Sparkle to help in many different sessions that we run.

• We use it in our newspaper round and simply tell tales and read the stories with a group of residents.

• We also use it to reminisce and ask residents what they were doing in a specific year, can they remember where they were during a specific event and get them sharing stories that way.

• We also use all the pages in our Weekly Sparkle as a giant quiz sheet, and read it out as in “can you guess what I’m talking about”? For example this lady was born on such and such a date, she became famous for

her singing and acting and starred in films such as ........ . Does anyone know who I’m talking about?' etc.

• We use the quiz pages also either collectively as a group or as an individual brainteaser. 2) The singalongs go well during almost any session we conduct

and the CDs provide an excellent tool as can provide a party atmosphere for our tea parties. It’s great to have music to play instruments to in our music therapy sessions and music to sing and dance to during the day.

All our residents are able to share one way or another with our weekly sparkle and I find it an invaluable tool to help provide activities and entertainment for the residents throughout the home.

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Entry from: Royal Albert Day Centre We have used the fashions and topics displayed in the articles as guides for our themed weeks. During these weeks we arrange all our activities around a particular theme including art projects / cooking / decorations /entertainment / trips out and even staff and service users dressing up in clothes of the era. There is such a wide and diverse range of wonderful materials / ideas to use and develop from the Daily Sparkle. Entry from: Park Lane Care Home The Daily Sparkle is a fantastic tool for reminiscence. We use it on a daily basis to engage many of the residents, some of whom often struggle to communicate.

• It is used as a one to one method of communication, reading and discussing the content, and as a group activity for the brilliant quizzes and puzzles which also offer the opportunities for group discussions and interaction.

• The music CD also offers a fantastic opportunity for positive feedback and interaction and we get out our box of instruments and have a musical sing song afternoon which most of the residents really do enjoy and can be seen to actively appreciate the time spent together, fantastic, can not fault it.

• The Sparkle is a marvellous addition to our activities schedule and is widely enjoyed by all.

Entry from: Hillside Nursing Home Activity 1: I use the CD's for a game of ' Name that Tune & Artist'. This is a game that most of our residents can participate in and those that are unable to still enjoy the music and singalong. Not only that, the music also prompts lots of memories so we often find out a few things about our residents’ past that we were unaware of. It’s also a good reminiscence tool.

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Activity 2: I always leave copies of the weekly sparkle in our lounges for people to read who have not attended our group reading of the sparkle. Some of our residents like to have a copy to read in their rooms or at a later date. I think that having copies in the lounges also gives relatives and friends who are visiting a tool to help them interact with the person they are visiting. As you can imagine communication can be very difficult and one sided with people with dementia and the pictures help too. It is sometimes hard for visitors and relatives to know what to say after the usual small talk so having something around they can just pick up and read/discuss is very handy. Entries from: Wantage Nursing Home Activity 1. Re -creating a sentence from separate words I find a meaningful sentence in the “Sparkle” and I write each word of the sentence on a separate piece of paper. The letters should be big, so the residents can see them easily. I find that nine words is a good length for most residents, however with less able residents it could be as little as two or three words. The game is done on a one to one basis, although sometimes you can have a small group involved – they love giving advice to the person engaged in the exercise. The resident places the words on a table and reads them. Then they try to place the words in order and re-create the original sentence. Usually deciding which word comes first is the most difficult step and you can help some residents. It can be a very interactive game and you can give a lot of encouragement, but be patient and try not to talk too much while the resident decides what to do. The result is very rewarding for the residents - besides feeling successful when they complete the sentence, they get interesting information too. Sometimes it leads to reminiscence and the resident wants to tell you a story – allow time for interaction after the game! Our latest sentence: “I can hardly believe how small the old prints were”

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Some wonderful photos of some of the residents at Wantage Nursing home taking part in the recreating the sentence activity.

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Activity 2. Guess the missing words: Retype a part of an article from the “Sparkle”. Leave some words out, but insert blank spaces in place of the missing words. The residents guess the missing words and write them in. Activity 3. Guess the missing words from small pictures: Retype part of an article from the “Sparkle”. Leave some chosen words out and insert blank spaces in place of the missing words. Draw small pictures in place of the missing words and let the residents guess the words and complete the article. Activity 4. Mime the scene - illustrating an article by making gestures and role-playing Read each sentence of a chosen article slowly and try to show the meaning of various words by gestures and role-playing. Encourage the residents to engage in the exercise. The gestures do not have to be accurate – for example, it is enough if the residents draw a rectangle with their hands when they hear “picture”, wave their arms when they hear “trees”, pretend to fly when they hear “birds”, etc. Nobody needs to guess what the other person means – this exercise is about imagination, movement and memories. Example: This picture reminds me of the woods a few miles from where I lived when I was a girl – The residents draw a square or a rectangle in the air with their arms (picture); touch their heads (remind); point to themselves (me); wave their arms above their heads (woods); play with their hair or make some girly gestures (girl). Activity 5. Making short words from longer words Take one short sentence from the “Sparkle” Print it at the top of an empty page. Give a photocopy to each resident. Let the residents create as many words as possible using the letters from the printed sentence.

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Entry from: Avery Lodge Care Home I have edited the Daily Sparkle to make it personalised for each individual resident of the home. For the "On this day" column we have found out what happened on the day our residents were born and for "The way we were" section we have written about the resident’s life story with an image of themselves placed on the back of a Care chart. Care Charts is a company, which sends out boards that go in the rooms of residents to assist in the care of those unable to communicate their own needs. We have ordered these boards for our residents on the Dementia suite. On the back of the board we are putting the personalised Daily Sparkles in. Residents are able to look at the images and the information about their lives and the interesting facts that happened on the day they were born. Carers can twist it around and see the resident’s care needs. This is both beneficial for the residents, who are able to reminiscence and bring back memories of their own, as well as being helpful for the care staff (and other health care professionals coming into the home) to know these residents more in-depth. The board is an A3 size and is hung in each individual’s room.

   

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Monday 20 th February 1928

On This Day

On 20th February, 1928 Jean Kennedy was born in Boston, Massachusetts to her parents Joseph P Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald. She was the eighth out of nine siblings and was described as the shyest and most guarded of the Kennedy children. She attended Manhattanville College where she met and befriended two future sisters-in-law. Smith was intricately involved with the political career of her older brother John, working on his 1946 Congressional campaign and other campaigns in 1952 and 1960. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton as the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, continuing a legacy of diplomacy begun by her father. In 1994, Smith came to the forefront of American foreign policy when she championed the granting of a U.S. visa to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams. She has won multiple awards for her contributions in Ireland and the disability community. She was awarded honoury citizenship by the government of Ireland in 1998. Adding to this she also received the Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service among many others. She is the last survivor of the Kennedy siblings.

The Way We Were WereWereWWWwWere

Lena was born in Scotland on 20th Feb 1928 to parents Helen and Robert. When Lena was 19, she married her first husband Hector in 1947 when she was 19 years old. She went on to raise a wonderful family of 5 children, Elizabeth, Roberta, Robin, Derek and Gordon. Due to Hectors work commitments they travelled between West Africa were they had a lovely house with servants and England. When Hector passed away, Lena stayed in England permanently and returned back to work as a book keeper in a furrier, London. This is where she met her second husband Reg who she married in 1967. They moved into a very old house in Kent with a village shop that Lena worked hard at to modernise. She decided to convert the shop into a ‘mini-market’ and continued this after they welcomed their daughter Lesley into the world in 1971. Sadly Reg became ill and they both decided to give up the shop and move to a newly built house is ash green, Kent. Lena returned back to book keeping to support the family until sadly Reg passed away in 1979. Lena decided she wanted to learn to drive and passed her test aged 51. When she met her third husband Sam, they moved to Wales to live with Lena’s mother for a few years. Lena continued to work in a nearby hotel as a receptionist and had two Yorkshire terriers named Bonny and Honey.

DayDay

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Ideas for other activities

Entry from: Sycamore Lodge Activity 1: May Dove Creative Activity We did a creative activity where residents helped to draw, cut and make the doves and we hung them under the light fittings in the lounge. One resident has kept her two doves to put on her Christmas tree in December!

We all liked the doves so much that in another two sessions we made different coloured birds and hung them on tree branches for a decoration in our reception! We have received lots of compliments and requests for the birds!

Activity 2: Dignity Bouquets - Creative/Spiritual Activity We used the flower patterns on the April basket to photocopy, cut out and make six beautiful dignity bouquets for the five units in the home as well as one for reception. The themed bouquet was to help

us celebrate Dignity. On each flower, residents, relatives and staff wrote what they were thankful for and how they would like others to treat them. It was a very emotional exercise for everyone including those who read them afterwards. The flowers were then stuck on a large sheet along with leaves and were then framed. The resulting bouquets were amazing!

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Entry from: Clarendon Hall - Hayley Sandison We have a resident at Clarendon Hall that is currently having speech therapy. I spend time with this Resident every day to help her to improve her speech and do a communication programme with her which the 'Speech and Language Therapist' has given me to do with this resident. The communication programme has a lot of automatic speech tasks in it - automatic speech refers to language that is produced spontaneously where the person does not need to think about what to say. One of the tasks is counting up to 10, another is saying the days of the week, a third is phrase completion (which is saying phrase endings). One of the most important ones in my eyes and one of the most enjoyable ways of doing this is through singing. I have found that the songs on the back of the Daily Sparkles are brilliant for this as they have missing words in them. I cut them out and put them in the folder and we sing them together and I stop singing when the missing words come up and point to them as a prompt as most of them have a few letters to give you a clue. Our resident finds this very helpful especially when she is struggling with some of the songs. I also cut out the proverb quizzes that are sometimes in there. I find this a very useful way of using the Daily Sparkles. I showed the Speech and Language Therapist this and she said that it is a very good idea and that our Resident is coming on very well with her speech since I have been helping her. So I can only think that your Daily Sparkle is helping lots of other people with speech and communication problems as well and for this I thank you.” I have also attached below a poem that I have written about the Daily Sparkle.

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Poem by Hayley Sandison

The Brilliant Daily Sparkle

The brilliant Daily Sparkle is the paper we all read The ‘way we were’ and ‘on this day’ fill us with intrigue

‘Do you remember’ and ‘over to you’ Refuel our memories and warm our hearts right through.

Sometimes it is all we need to brighten up the day And the different quizzes on the back help time tick away

I must say the Daily Sparkle really lives up to its name And everyone at Clarendon, I am sure they feel the same.

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Entries from: Focal Point Day Centre Activity 1: “Who am I?” by using dates of birth, etc. giving clues to service users and them trying to guess who I am. Activity 2: Birthdays - same birthday as service users/ actors actresses etc., Quizzes and sing songs. Activity 3: Do you remember? pages - debate with service users helps memories and are great for reminiscence groups. Entry from: East Hill House At East Hill House Residential Home we have a resident who is the Residents Representative and he does the Sparkle in the main lounge and in the dining room over lunch for those that missed it that day. He enjoys telling the stories to the residents with and without Dementia. He does the quizzes and sings the songs with and without the CD. He feels valued and helpful to the staff, which of course he is.

Photo of some of the residents of East Hill House

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Entry from: Stockport Lodge Care Home We re-invent one day in the week of the Daily Sparkle and carry out the theme throughout the day. Residents and staff take part in the daily activity, hopefully helping to set the scene. Entry from: Burlington House Time and again family members visiting their loved ones in the care home run out of things to talk to their relatives about. As a talking point/point of interest, we have copies of the Weekly Sparkles in the reception area and we encourage the family members to discuss the issues with the residents. Entry from: Green Lane View HWC “We use the Sparkle in hangman sessions. Our tenants do like word games and are hot stuff when it comes to scrabble. Another favourite is hangman where one person thinks of a word and everyone else has to guess letters until they can work out what the word is. Unfortunately, most people go "empty-head" when asked to think of a word. You can't think of any word whatsoever. However, a crafty peek at a Sparkle usually provides a devious word for everyone else to try to work out. A definite lifesaver!”

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Entry from: The Elms Many of my craft projects involve using recycled materials so purely out of interest I searched on the Internet for ways of using shredded paper. Most homes have a shredder so this seemed the most useful way of making use of old Sparkles. Here are some of the ideas that I found; perhaps they may be of use to someone, somewhere:

- Packaging - when sending items through the post - Papier-mâché for craft projects - Tombola tubs at fetes - Compost -Mulch/plant insulation -Lining hanging baskets -Animal bedding (hamsters and rabbits) -Storing veg/bulbs etc.

I’m sure there are many more........................ Entry from: Dovedale Court The Weekly sparkles are used at our social afternoons to engage our residents in reminiscence activities.

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Entry from: Queensbridge House We use the Daily Sparkle for our residential & dementia clients at Queensbridge House. We also distribute the Sparkles to wards at Cheltenham General Hospital every Friday on a weekly basis. We add a couple of extra pages to the Daily Sparkle pages we receive from you. These include our own little piece of news, what’s happening at Queensbridge and adding in any celebrations we are currently having i.e. 30th anniversary birthday. We also add in our monthly newsletters to show hospital patients what Queensbridge has been up to!”

Have a go at this D-Day word search

D-Day  Word  Search AIRBOURNE ALLIES ARTILLARY ASSAULT AXIS BEACH CASUALTIES DUKWBOAT FLAMETHROWER GOERING GOLD HIMMLER HITLER MACHINEGUN MINES OMAHA RIFLE SNIPER SWORD UTAH

Random words on D-Day

Try to find all 20 words on this board.

Z G Z J B K T W P W Y L K U J Q I C U S

R T M Q A C L L F G Q S R R Y Y L M K R

E U F G S U U K L H C E N U K X F R N X

C F X C O X A M F Z P H S W E A W E X E

K R L J F O S W B I A I L W E Z C L K Q

I Z E N Q L S D N T X D E G P E B T A Q

H A G L I C A S U A L T I E S V R I P N

C K M Q M L R M W K I D Y F C J Z H U S

K W Q W L M T A E O W R D O F P G T U C

C M S I F I I C U T R B B E A C H V W V

H W E B Q N L H D V H D O O P H A J X I

F S X M X E L I V Q I R M A U Y B G T C

N E E U X S A N A H A M O A T R W J K S

U Y Z Z A X R E I I Z H B W O O N M G L

P B H M G W Y G O E R I N G E O Y E J P

F I O P H Q O U V V I Q Q U E R S U F G

C M M H M L N N N Z C M G G I Z B O T C

C P K D D S B N T W X H X F P B R M H Y

K W H W Q J W O E Q W C L T

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Entry from: Walton Community Hospital We have a designated reader to read the sparkles and go through the quizzes with all the patients, some as a group, some as individuals and they thoroughly enjoy the activity. When we have the CD’s we do a singalong group on each ward and get the patients to join in. The physiotherapy team also encourages the patient to get up and dance or swing their arms, any form of exercise really that is beneficial for the patients. The papers are printed for the wards but the CD goes around the wards in turn. Whoever thought of this has really made a difference to patients in our hospital. In this environment we cannot provide photos otherwise you would love you to see the patients enjoying the "Sparkle Sessions". Entry from: Hall Park Care Home Activity 1: Firstly we create Quiz Books and songbooks out of the Daily Sparkles. We cut out the relevant sections and put them into a book to create a resource on the floors for other staff, families or residents to just be able to pick up and use whenever they want to.

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Activity 2: We have made storage boxes for the Daily Sparkles by using the Daily Sparkle themselves! Firstly we get a cereal box and

cut it to shape, we then cover this with some old daily sparkles, cutting out sections and gluing onto the box. We then store the Daily Sparkles in these boxes around the home. It’s a simple way for everyone to know where the used Daily Sparkles belong and where to find one if they would like to read them.

Activity 3: We sat down with the residents and thought about other ways in which we could use the Daily Sparkles. The most popular one was to have a Daily Sparkle table in the quiet lounge - made from Daily Sparkles! So we got to work cutting out sections from the Daily Sparkle and glued them onto a side table that had

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been donated to us. After hours of work we finally had a finished product that the residents and ourselves are very proud of. It takes pride of place in one of our lounges and the storage baskets holds our Daily Sparkle quiz book and singalong book. The residents’ love reading the table and it is a feature piece prompting conversation between residents and from anyone who visits. I would recommend that everyone has a Daily Sparkle table! Activity 4: We used canvases and did collages of food/kitchen based Daily Sparkle articles and these are displayed in the dining area. Once again, a great resource and conversation starter. Perfect for the reminiscence cafe.

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Readers Comments

Entry from: Clarendon Hall Care Home Sandra Charlton - Relative of Clarendon Hall This great daily paper delivered by Hayley brightens the day up for families with its articles, pictures and quizzes. It is a brilliant communication tool that brings back lots of lovely memories for my husband and me. Everyone needs a bit of sparkle. Carol Money - Relative of Clarendon Hall What a brilliant idea the Daily Sparkle is. My father has been in Clarendon Hall now for 4 weeks and I read the sparkle to him most days. It is a great talking point for us during what can, at times, be a very daunting and depressing time because of Dad's terminal illness. It also gives visiting relatives a conversation piece and can be an icebreaker when meeting new relatives who are also visiting. Long may it continue. Carol Bradshaw - Relative of Clarendon Hall We read the Daily Sparkle every day and it brings back memories and makes us laugh. We enjoy doing the quiz and hope you add more pages in the future. Viviane Wenham - Resident at Clarendon Hall I save my Sparkles for my Grandson who distributes them to 'MIND' where he does voluntary duties. Patients appreciate reading them and find the blank page useful for writing and drawing.