In terms of self-management, I did do as well as I could have or compared to how I did in the past. Along with my partner, we managed to plan out several possible activities and chose out two, which was basically macaroni art and colouring; we chose these activities because according to last year, a lot of the elderly liked colouring and we also wanted an activity that would be new and possibly enjoyable and because we won’t learn more of what the elderly like without a little bit of experimenting and it’s better to do trial activities earlier on rather than later. However, I was not very specific when organising the materials needed for the macaroni art, and we didn’t have the correct type of glue, so the session instead resulted in just colouring and playing card and board games. Likewise, it’s possible that we might’ve remembered the date of our second session wrong and so the group went unprepared to the HDB, and I should’ve checked the schedule beforehand because the activities planned for the second session didn’t require a lot of materials and shouldn’t have been difficult to organise and to start. So, I could improve on the organisation when planning.
I could also improve on my social skills because I wasn’t very great at communicating with the ladies at Evergreen. I was usually not the one to initiate the conversation and usually stayed with another person in the service so I wouldn’t be alone. I tried the best I could to assist them in craft activities, but whenever there was a lull in conversation, I struggled to keep it going.
I’d like to say that planning activities for our session were of equal contribution between my partner and me. I contributed more ideas, but my partner offered more experience and gave advice as to which activities would be received better or worse by the elderly.
