Halcyon House news

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the households at Halcyon.

On Friday, our residents spent some time painting snowflakes and Christmas trees. There were some very fancy snowflakes and trees decorated with glitter and jewels. This was a fun, and somewhat relaxing, activity to celebrate the upcoming holidays.

Our households are decorated and ready for Christmas. Staff and residents spent the week decorating our Christmas trees and getting into the holiday spirit with hot cocoa and Christmas music, and ended the week watching 'White Christmas.”

After the decorating, everyone was ready for a Monday afternoon treat. We enjoyed a taste of Christmas with a steaming mug of hot cocoa, Christmas cookies, and a dish of peppermint ice cream to round off this Christmas decorating party. Trivia on the true meaning of the song 'Twelve Days of Christmas” was shared as part of this party. The 'Twelve Days of Christmas” song was used to secretly pass on the ideology of Christianity. In this theory, each gift symbolizes a different aspect of the faith. To top off this festive day of Christmas decorating, we had subs from Subway with all of the fixings, for the evening meal.

Monday's trivia program was 'Let It Snow.” For this snowy program we made cut-out snowflakes (as we did in school). Everyone's snowflake was beautifully different, with intricate details, to hang by their doors. We talked about the fun things to do with snow, worked on an 'It's Snowing” word search, and trivia was shared about snowflakes. We learned that dirt and wind-blown snow combined together create 'snirt”; and after capturing 5,000 snowflakes and finding no two identical, Wilson Bentley wanted the world to know just how unique snowflakes were.

Gingerbread houses and cookies were decorated by the participants at Lending Hands. December word puzzles and Christmas 'Name That Tune” tested thinking skills. For cinema day, a Christmas episode of the TV show 'Bonanza” was shown. Dick Colby led his 'Classics, Etc.” class, followed by a recital by the students of piano teacher Margie Runaas.