Julia-Grace – Staff Update
Hello everyone, welcome back and Happy New Year!
Starting back at AJs this year we’ve got right back into the swing of things. A job came in from Bremick Fasteners that everyone has been able to work on. This job has required assembling various hexagon screws with cyclone washers and plates. Everyone has contributed to getting these done and has been a really good for job for AJs. Other work that has come back this year is the newspaper job that requires separating the paper, folding it, then putting it through the shredder so it can be used for the animals at Orana Park. Aucom is another popular job in the workroom which requires screwing a screw into a cage clamp. The guys have been working hard and have been doing really well at all of these jobs.
On a Monday I take a group out bowling. Ayden and Ross are regulars with this group coming every week. The staff are wonderful to us, always making sure the fryer is on when Ayden asks so we can get our beloved curly fries during our game. We also bring one other person with us who changes each week, that group that rotates through are: Hamish, Kyle, Laurel, Harley A, Harrison, Eddy and Daniel. I’ve noticed that they all seem to love coming back and telling everybody at AJs when they have beat me at bowling, which funnily enough appears to happen quite often!
On Wednesdays I have two groups which alternate every week. One week I have the girls – Alecia and Lyric. They enjoy various activities, and the favourite seems to be going to a café but others we’ve done that they’ve enjoyed have been Timezone, tie-dying, board games and the one they told me was their favourite last year was going to the cat café!
Every other Wednesday is the boy’s group – Jack, Daniel and Harrison. Jack and Daniel were the original members of this group and they decided they wanted to make a movie. The story and their characters were chosen by them. They brought Harrison on to be another main character in the movie. The story is about a ghostbuster (Daniel), a rockstar (Harrison) and a wizard (Jack) who track down some ghosts through different worlds, including pirate world, wiggle world and Christmas world to name a few. This project has been taking us a while to complete, but we are hoping to finally finish in the coming months.
During the week I have FOCUS sessions with various people. F.O.C.U.S stands for: Fitness, Outcomes, Commitment, Upbeat, Setting goals. I do one-on-one sessions which are more concentrated on individual goals and interests. I start off the week with Chris, who likes to mix it up and we do a different activity each week, although he seems to like the activities where we count the exercises out loud the best. On a Tuesday Kaine likes to go for a walk and look at motorbikes or lime scooters, then Joseph picks out which activity he would like to do, which normally favours going for a walk if the weather is good. Jack has a set routine he does then he likes to finish up by doing some work on the weight machine. On Wednesdays Anthony likes to learn some earthbending (from Avatar the Last Airbender) during his sessions. We found that earthbending was based on Hung Gar Kung Fu, so we spend the session learning fundamentals from this while also incorporating some other martial arts techniques. On a Thursday Helen has her session and she enjoys having a go on the Blazepods and attempts to set herself a new high score each week. After Helen’s session, Laureen likes to do some dancing and she often likes to bring in Georgia and Sophie to join her. Popular songs with the group are ABBA songs, however Laureen’s all-time favourite that she likes to make us sit through, is definitely ‘Jesus loves me’. Last day of the week is when Hamish likes to either play a game or go for a walk, Kyle also indicates he likes to go for a short walk and Clement likes to do some rowing on the rowing machine during his session. Lastly, Jeff and Harrison like to do their session together where they play various games of skill competitions against each other.
