6 Book Challenge at Downham Market Library

The amount of work was very hard but we have all done well, my heart runs wild and is full of all the fun we have had over the past few months.

Everyone worked well and even though some of us did not finish the challenge yet we will in the new year and then everyone will have a certificate.

Here are the pictures of the day.

 Here is me and Lily and Chris filling in the feedback forms, we had to think hard about what we wanted to say.

 This is Keith, our Downham Market supporter and volunteer. He works with us very well and we all say thank you to Keith for all his work. Here he is working with Robin on his papers and feed back form.

 This is Paul, each month he uses the computer and looks things up, he is very happy that there are films on so he can find thing out for himself.

 Here I am again with Paul and Jan from the library and Robin making sure everyone's names are spelled right on the certificates.

Here we all are getting our certificates in the library. we are all proud of ourselves and each other.

This course was very different to anything we have done in the past, we only met once a month and had to do all the work ourselves between the meetings. We helped each other out and we took responsibility for our own learning. If someone got stuck there was always help if you needed it and we would sometimes meet up and 2 or 3 of us would work together on our own. If things were too hard then David would help us as well.

We love to use the library and we love to work with the library staff, they know so much about the books and films and cd stories that it makes our hearts glad to visit them.

We loved working with Jan, she was so good at helping us and we hope she liked our work as well. We all want to say Thank You Jan, you have made this hard work so much fun and made us look forward to coming to see you every month. Happy Christmas Jan.

We have been so happy with the Downham group that we now visit lots of other libraries on our own and as a group and I found out that i could also join the library in Wisbech even though that is Cambridgeshire and not Norfolk. They have different books from the ones in Norfolk libraries.

We will be doing more in the new year and helping the people who have not yet got to 6 books, everyone should be done by the end of January so there will be more certificates in the February meeting.

We are now looking at our next lot of work, everyone says that it makes them swell with happiness to learn new things and to do this on our own and with David and the library. We will let you know what we get up to.

Happy Christmas and have a very good New Year from everyone at SAP

Love Shane.

Downham Market Group - In the Library

We have been working with the staff in the Downham Market Library on the 6 book challenge, this is the web site.

http://sixbookchallenge.org.uk/

We have been working hard and we are writing a report and taking pictures to let everyone know what we have done. We will put this up soon so keep looking at our page to find out more.

Stop Smoking

We were thinking about smoking, some of us do smoke and so does David who works for us. We were talking to Isla and she had been doing some work with the Smoke Free Norfolk. Isla asked us if we would like to all meet up and talk about what stops people from wanting to give up cigarettes. We also met with Haley and Carl from Open Doors, they used to be People First and we knew them from a long time ago.

It was a good day and we looked at all the things the Smoke Free women, Moira and Kate brought. They had a cube with tar in it, a model of some lungs and they brought a gas tester for us all to breath in.

This tester measured the carbon monoxide in our breath. We had talked about carbon monoxide before when we talked to people about making sure our fires were serviced and we had enough ventilation in our houses. Carbon monoxide can kill you. All the people who smoke had very high readings so that made them think.

Since then David has stopped smoking and the others are giving it a go. It was a very good day and it was very nice meeting up with everyone.

Its not just cooking but keeping clean as well.

We have been doing a lot more cooking, we are all learning to look after our food and how to store things safely so we don’t get sick. We talked about all the things that can happen to you if you don’t use a fridge or if you put hot things in your freezer. We talked about how to keep things clean but not go too far.

Anti-bac is good but if you use it too much then you are just wasting money so we talked about what you can do with just soap and washing up liquid, we are all now cleaner and better off.

After all that we wanted to make cakes so here we are making our Madeleine, we made cake then rolled it in jam then coconut and left it to set. It was very nice.

Date for your diary - 11th August - Downham Market Water Festival

Come and see us on our stall at the Water festival on the 11th August.
http://www.downhamweb.co.uk/water-festival/

Do take a moment to look at the Downham Web site for things to do in and around Downham Market and to find out about the area. There is even a bit that shows you the weather over the next couple of days so you can plan fun days out.

http://www.downhamweb.co.uk/

A report from Shane

Since the last Blog I have to say the work has been going ever so well, everybody has been working hard and well

Maths has been up to the very high standard and people are getting ahead, the English is doing the same. The cooking group has been a great joy and success and we have put an extra hour on the end of that session so we have time to all sit together and eat the dinner we have cooked.

The Downham Market group has been and is going very strong, the founders are telling other people about the group and we will see what successes we have in the near future.

The Compass group is going well and it takes David a lot of time to work out the sessions and risk assessments and things like that. I am learning how to do these as well. We had one month where we did not go out because members had other group work to be getting on with, it is such fun and I am so happy that we now have lots of work that sometimes we have to change things around to help people, it is hard to use a diary and now I know why David has such a  big diary. I will need a bigger one next year rather than the little pocket one I have now. This makes me feel very pleased but it is hard work.

We are still doing the social and dinner stuff. We went out for a meal with Penny and Alex and we are going to have a summer BBQ and invite all our friends and other workers to come and eat with us, we will all cook for them so there will be some normal BBQ stuff but we will then  cook things that people like as well.

Now I have one of my poems for you. I hope you like it.

Shane Malster
Chair

TIME IS RIGHT

Time is right, the place is now
come to me and tell me how
you run away with him
he is just a lucky jim

People help me run and hide
now you find me inside
please let me go
damn just say no

Heart of gold
brave and bold
now let me run away
for the next few days

When you find the love tonight
make it so right
love is so cool
you crazy old fool

Lets all say the time is right
for the people in the light.

Chicken Curry

Des, Shane, Paul and Robin cook a chicken curry. This was very easy to do and we found out that it was cheaper to feed 5 of us by cooking our own than to buy one microwave curry.

We had lots of fun and a nice lunch as well.