The Puddings pack, as it comes off the printer. Four of its twelve pages.
A week of activities, already written. Try this one: Puddings, Pies and Sunday Dinners.
You know the feeling. The lounge is full, someone’s off sick, and the plan you meant to write is still in your head. This one’s done for you: five short sessions, Monday to Friday, each with its own page and a box that says how to run it.
There’s a quiz with easier choices in brackets (“beef or chicken?”), a real photograph of a Shrove Tuesday tea in 1956, old kitchen weights to work out together, a story to read aloud, six songs about food and drink, and a gentle session for residents who find a group too much.
A new pack arrives by email every Thursday. Print it, read the first page once, and if you’re pulled onto the floor, a colleague can pick up that day’s page and run it.
Send me the free sample, all 12 pages No card. We email once, a week later.
Why a weekly pack, and why on paper.
Coordinators are usually the first to be pulled onto the floor when a shift is short, and the planning is what goes. Fireside Weekly is that planning, done: five short sessions every week, Monday to Friday, that anyone on the team can pick up.
It’s written for adults who have lived full lives, so nothing in it is childish. Quiz questions have easier choices in brackets, and every answer and song year is checked against a named source before the pack goes out. There’s a gentle session each week for residents who find a group too much, or who are in bed that day.
The pack pages are set in Atkinson Hyperlegible, a typeface the Braille Institute designed for readers with low vision. Enlarge them to A3 for the group table, or print the black-and-white version to save ink.
There are good free resources out there, and you should keep using them. This is for the weeks when there’s no time to pull them together. At £19 a month it’s about £4.40 a week, less than half an hour of staff time.
Fireside Weekly