It was a great session at Barnet Copthall Leisure Centre today with three new members attending, Eva, Martin and Ronnie. On arrival, members were greeted with tea, coffee, cakes and biscuits and were given wordsearches and colouring to do. One of the carers, Kevin, wanted a bit more of a challenge, so Faz gave him some countdown numbers challenges and a maze game.
The session leaders today were Muz and Faz from Ping Is King Ltd. Muz welcomed everyone and introduced Lisa who reminded members about the upcoming launch event at the Eversfield Centre in Mill Hill on 27th March. Muz and Faz ran a game of Pingo, which is like a traditional game of Bingo but with a table tennis related twist. Members get to pick the numbers by fishing numbered table tennis balls out of a bag using a small sieve.
There was a prize for getting a line and a prize for getting a full house. Ronnie’s luck was in as he scooped the prize for getting the first line. It was lovely to see a new member win a prize in his first ever game. Pingo has another twist on traditional bingo. In normal bingo there is usually only one winner, but in Pingo everyone gets a full house at the same time, so everyone is a winner and shares in the excitement!
After Pingo, there was seated exercises by Annalisa. She got everyone to sit around in a circle and then ran a series of excellent stretching routines for every part of their body. Everyone was totally focused and followed everything Annalisa did perfectly.
Aaron then performed a fantastic array of music and had everyone singing and dancing with classics like Singing in The Rain, which was particularly apt given the very wet weather. Aaron did try and get the sun to come out by playing ‘you are my sunshine’ but the rain just kept on pouring.
It certainly didn’t dampen spirits though as everyone formed a line to do the conga dance to ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain’ around the café area having lots and lots of fun. After many great songs including ‘Catch a Falling Star’, Aaron then entertained members with a music quiz. There was a record score of 205 this week! I leave the reader to decide whether it was achieved fairly and squarely!!
All in all, everyone had a really fun afternoon with colouring, word searches, Pingo, seated exercise, singing and dancing. Thank you to Annalisa from BETTER for not only running a great exercise session but also for helping to make the teas and coffees. Thank you also to our volunteers today, Annette, and of course to Lisa and Mark and Muz and Faz.
