Eastleigh Borough and Romsey Mencap Society
Gina
Important changes for us all...
There was some very good news in the latest update from the Prime Minister this week, when he told us that we will be able to meet our friends and relatives outside, from Monday 1st June.
We all have to remember to stay 2-metres apart from each other and keep washing our hands, but if we can remember to do those things, we will be allowed to meet with as many as 5 other people and sit in the park or a garden together. The weather has been so good; it will be nice to enjoy some of the sunshine with friends too.
We are not able to meet in our usual groups again yet, the Prime Minister and his team still want the number of people who are unwell to be much lower before that can happen. We will keep planning for the time when we are allowed to meet again. We all hope that will be soon.
You can still call Michelle if you need to talk, or email Michelle or Gina if you want to use email. We are always happy to hear from you. Please take care and remember to keep washing your hands.
Stay Safe...
Our friend, Bill, was inspired to decorate the driveway of his home with this cheerful message for his neighbourhood! Thanks to Bill for letting us share it with you all.
Stay Safe - Bill's message
Zoom Chats
If you would like to join in with any of the Zoom social chats, please email gina.rouse@ebrmencap.org.uk for the Zoom meeting number and secure password. If you would like some help setting up and getting access to Zoom please email Gina or Michelle.
The times for each Zoom chat are:
- Gardening Club - Monday 8th June 1pm
- Chill Out Club Group B - Monday 8th June 7:30pm
- Active Citizens - Tuesday 9th June at 10am
- Flagship Art Club - Thursday 11th June 10am
- Basketball Club - Saturday 13th June 10am
- Chill Out Club Group A - Monday 15th June 7:30pm
It will be wonderful to speak with you, if you can join us. Just because we can’t be together, doesn’t mean we can’t see each other!
Getting Active Outdoors
It is good news that we can go outside to meet our friends, but have you also been going outside in the garden, an outside space close to home, or for a walk?
Since the last Newsflash, the Prime Minister told us we are allowed out more than once a day. Now we can go out for longer walks more than once a day, to help us to stay active and healthy during the lockdown.
Do you have a favourite place for a walk? We would love to hear how you have been enjoying your time outdoors!
With this extra exercise in mind we have designed a Scavenger Hunt for you to try...
Scavenger Hunt Competition
Have some fun on one of your walks during the month of June and you could win a prize by finding the things on the scavenger hunt list:
- 2 butterflies
- Robin
- 5 blue cars
- Rose growing in a garden or a park
- 3 Clouds
- Wooden bench
- Bridge that you walk over or under (over or under a road, a river, the railway or a path, for example)
- Spiders’ web
- 4 tall trees
- Bee
Cross the items off your list as you find them. Try to get all ten.
To win a prize, send us your completed list with details of where you walked. First entry out of our hat will win a prize. Contact us by email or post...
Here’s a little poem to get you going:
If you take a walk outside,
you just might win a prize
Find all the things on this list,
while you stretch your legs and test your wits
Just tick them off as you go,
and tell us where you took your stroll.
Gina
SEASONAL FLOWERS WORDSEARCH
(These are flowering in Michelle’s garden right now)
Names can be read across, backwards, diagonally, up or down
Daisy
Poppy
Foxglove
Aquilegia
Buttercup
Honeysuckle
Nigella
Diascia
Marigold
Iris
Rose
Geum
Peony
Chives
Nasturtium
Allium
Poppy
|
No prize this time – do it for fun please.
SEASONAL FLOWERS WORDSEARCH june 2020.pd[...]
Adobe Acrobat document [566.7 KB]
Art Work from the Flagship Art Club
The Flagship Art Club has a closed Facebook group and each week their art tutor sets some artistic challenges for them. Some members post their weekly work on the online page for others to see. This is just one example of their beautiful work.
Painting of a Siskin by the artist, Paul Stevan Hartley
Drawing inspired by PS Hartley's painting, by Abbie Matcham
Ideas for Art Work
If you want to look at some great art, find an artist for inspiration and try out using your own materials to make something similar, go to the Mall Galleries website.
https://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/artist-explorer
Quizzing Around...?...?
Cliff Spiers has been keeping many of us mentally active by setting a Quiz each Friday night. There is a different link each week, anyone who would like to participate should just request the link
from Michelle. This week grateful quiz players donated £270 to the society. Many thanks to Cliff and friends!
What you have been doing...
We asked you how you were keeping busy. Here are three examples from our members of what they have done in the lockdown.
- Kath has made a beautiful heart
- Bill made a banner to display during the final Clap for Carers night
- Stevan has been busy with jigsaw and model making, but most impressive of all is his Battenburg cake!
Keeping busy?
Please tell us what you have been doing during the lockdown. Maybe you are a champion jigsaw puzzle maker, have been keeping a diary, have grown some plants or re-decorated your room.
Whatever you have done – we are interested!
Please send in photos or pictures of your art work if you have been creative (by post or email). We will share some in our next newsletter.
Royal MENCAP suggests…
MENCAP TV – this is a Royal MENCAP resource on YouTube. There are exercises and short films made by people with learning disabilities.
The themes include:
- Fitness - #movewithMencap - Instructional work out videos
- Food - #cookwithMencap - Basic cooking tutorials
- Arts and Crafts - #createwithMencap - Drawing or painting tutorial
- Music - #partywithMencap - Live performance/singalong
- Entertain - #funwithMencap - Quizzes, TV picks, reviews and more!
- Wellbeing - #chillwithMencap - Yoga sessions, gardening/potting plants, poetry
Looking after your mental health
The NHS gives us ten tips to help our mental health.
https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters/coronavirus-covid-19-anxiety-tips/?WT.tsrc=Paid_Social&WT.mc_id=coronavirus-mh&utm_campaign=1378812_20.%20Covid%20-19%20latest%20update%2017.04.2020%20%28all%20NPs%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=dotmailer&dm_i=4P14,TJWC,2UTUR6,3KXDB,1
This is a brief resume for people who cannot go online.
- Stay Connected – talk to your family, friends and others you know by phone, Zoom, Facebook, WhatsApp – whatever is available to you.
- Talk about your worries to trusted people – don’t bottle things up. Some people share your worries and others are less concerned, talking can help you to see things differently.
- Support and help others – do things for people around you and listen to them.
- Think what you need to get by and make sure you organise it. This will help you to feel in control.
- Look after your body – make sure you eat well, drink enough and exercise regularly. You can go out to exercise once a day and some people can go out more than once, if they have a special health need. You need to keep 2metres away from people when outside.
- Only listen to the facts – you may want to know everything, or nothing about the virus: if you want to know about it, make sure you get your information from a trusted media source, do not listen to rumours or pass them on.
- Stay on top of difficult feelings – you may get anxious, but try to focus on the things you can control – what you do in your life, who you talk to, and where you get your information. Plan your day as you want it to be.
- Do things you enjoy, this will help you to feel better. Try something new or maybe do something you have not done for a long time. (Knitting, crochet, cross stitch, painting, jigsaws, wordsearches, gardening, growing seedlings). There are lots of ideas online but if that is not available, have a look around your house or talk to others who may have ideas about what you might do.
- Focus on the present, don’t worry about the future. Plan for now. You may enjoy mindfulness breathing and relaxation techniques.
- Make sure you get enough sleep. Don’t drink too much caffeine in the day, stop using your phone about an hour before bedtime and leave it in another room overnight, so you cannot look at it.
REMEMBER, WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.
If you have received a paper copy of the newsletter that came through the post during the week 27-30 April, make sure you keep the special envelope. It is one that commemorates the effort of Capt Tom Moore, who set out to raise £1,000 for NHS charities by walking up and down his garden but raised over £28 million.
It was his one hundredth birthday on Thursday, April 30 and the Post Office has commemorated his effort with this special post mark for use this week only. This is a good souvenir of this strange time. Who knows, one day it may be valuable!
Titanic Story
Titanic Story
Andy Skinner, the education officer at Sea City Museum, who has hosted many visits for us, has recorded a guided tour of the museum with lots of additional stories that we might not know. This could
be of interest if you like Titanic stories. There are also some colouring sheets if you have a printer at home, as well as an online quiz and a crossword.
https://seacitymuseum.co.uk/online-activities
Other local and national museums and galleries are also offering different activities to keep people involved, have a look around their websites.
The Active Citizens' list of... Stuff to do at home!
- Talking to friends on the phone
- Face timing your family
- Using facebook
- Write letters to friends and post them
Being Active...
Pilates
It is important to get some gently exercise – 15 minutes of guided Pilates each day can be found on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/thejoyfulmovementlife/
(If you go out, try to avoid close contact with other people)
Try to do something active at least once a day, or more…
- Start a short daily keep- fit routine, you can do at home. Some stretches, bends, etc. Maybe do some home made circuits, use tins of beans as weights
- Work out a dance routine you can do everyday to a favourite piece of music
- Cycling around the block or to the park and back
- Gardening. Digging, planting, watering and weeding can all provide good exercise.
- Yoga
- Walking – walking with purpose. Not dawdling along but walking briskly, decide where you are going and move swiftly along to that place, swinging your arms and being energetic. Then walk back, time each way, see if you can walk faster.
- Nature walk – if there is a park near your home, walk there every few days and see what is changing. Are there bulbs coming up?
- Playing on the Wii – particularly any sport or exercise
- Spring cleaning your room
- Spring cleaning your house
- Decorating your room (house)
Being Creative...
My house, my garden
Plan to have an entry in our Art Competition
All entries welcome
My house, my garden
Entries on a postcard to show what you do in your house or garden, how your house or garden looks, or produce a picture of the place where you would like to live. This is a perfect activity for
lockdown.
We are looking for brilliant original artwork, all postcards submitted will be displayed at the Flagship Art Exhibition in the autumn. There will be
prizes.
More creative ideas...
- Painting by numbers in a book or on your tablet
- Colouring in an adult colouring book
- Keeping a diary of all the things you did while staying at home
- Learn a poem off by heart
- Wordsearches
- Dot to dot puzzles
- Knitting
- Making Easter Cards
- Crocheting
- Painting
- Sketching
- Drawing a self portrait using a mirror or photograph
- Making a scrap book of the last year, or a recent holiday
- Making models with lego
- Doing jigsaw puzzles easy ones first, then the really hard ones!
- Baking
- Planning new meals and making them
- Making craft kits – cross stitch
- Making models – planes, ships etc
- Learning to do origami
Being Organised...
- Sorting out all the pictures on your phone, deleting the terrible ones!
- Decluttering your room – do you need this? Do you still like it? Make decisions!
- Sorting out your spring clothes, summer clothes…! Does it still fit? Am I still comfortable in this?
Being Entertained...
- Watching TV
- Watching DVDs or box sets
- Reading
- Listening to music
- Choose your Desert Island Discs – your favourite 8 songs. Think why they are important to you and how you would talk about them if asked
- Play games on your phone
- Listening to audio books
- Listening to stories and plays on the radio
- Bird watching from your window – can you identify the birds?
- Counting the birds that come to your feeder, recording what you see.
The beauty is you can do some of these things at the same time!
Multi-task…!
Where to get stuff...
We don’t like to endorse one company above another but THE WORKS (TheWorks.co.uk) on Market Street in Eastleigh has a huge range of quite cheap puzzle books and blank Easter cards to make. Hobbycraft (www.hobbycraft.co.uk/southampton) at West End has many things to buy that can occupy your time.
Please tell us if you have found other things to do that you want to share with your friends. We will add these to the list and if you send in pictures we will showcase them.
Printable list of Stuff to Do...
Links to more information about Covid-19
- GovUK Coronavirus (COVID-19): what you need to do
- NHS Coronavirus (COVID-19): For health information and advice
Our contact details...
Eastleigh Borough & Romsey MENCAP
Give us a call if you have any queries. 023 8048 3471
POSTAL ADDRESS : 56 Oak Tree Road, Southampton SO18 1PH
GINA’s EMAIL ADDRESS : gina.rouse@ebrmencap.org.uk
EMAIL ADDRESS : ebr.mencap@ntlworld.com
WEBSITE ADDRESS : www.ebrmencap.org.uk
REGISTERED CHARITY NUMBER 263620
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