On Saturday, November 8th, from 1 to 4 pm, 3 members of AYLUS’s Roslyn branch visited CP Nassau’s Seaford residential home.
When we first arrived, we greeted the staff and the five residents who had joined us. We started off by baking chocolate chip cookies. First, we preheated the oven, and then we started making the cookies. The recipe called for cookie mix, butter, and one egg. After we added all the ingredients into a bowl, two of the residents helped us mix the batter together. It was hard to combine everything into a dough because the butter could not be melted, only softened, but one of the residents did a great job mashing the butter and kneading the ingredients together. We then formed around 24 balls out of the dough, with help from that resident, and placed them onto two pans to go into the oven for 12-14 minutes.
While we waited for the cookies to bake, we decided to make bracelets with the residents. Each resident chose their favorite colors and the letters or initials of their names to go on the bracelets. Some of them were able to help string the beads onto the bracelets, and they all admired how the bracelets turned out at the end. After this, we played a competitive round of Uno with four of the residents and a game of Bingo. The residents seemed to enjoy the friendly competition and congratulated the winners.
At this point, we took a break to taste the cookies, which had been cooling during Bingo. Two of the residents needed to have them cut up, but everybody thought the cookies were delicious, and some of the residents even ended up asking for more. Next, when we had cleaned up, we worked on a craft. We used straws and cutouts to make flower bouquets. The residents helped glue the flower cutouts to the straws. We glued the “flowers” to a piece of cardboard, which we wrapped around the flowers and placed a bow cutout on top to make a bouquet. Finally, we ended the visit with some puzzles. Each resident chose a picture to do a puzzle to, and we helped them place the pieces to match the picture.
We had a great afternoon spending time with the residents and hope the residents had a great time too. We can’t wait to visit again!
Volunteers who participated: Jason Wei (3 hours), Leah Chan (3 hours), Connie Lin (3 hours)
Reporter: Connie Lin
