Activities at Alice Grange Care Home
Activities are an integral part of life at our care home. We want to ensure that the people we support have as much fun as possible during their time with us, so it’s important that our activities programme is created with the interests of residents in mind. Our skilled Activities Coordinators bring a certain uniqueness to the home that can’t be found anywhere else, and which is reflected in the activities they organise.
Penny Allen
Hi, my name is Penny and I am the Lead Activities Coordinator here at Alice Grange.
I have many years of experience working in care homes in Activities, leisure and lifestyle roles.
I love being part of the Alice Grange team and supporting our residents to live their best lives with fun, interesting, and varied activities available every week. I always feel that the residents' input into our weekly planner is important as it gives all residents equal opportunity to explore new interests as well as keeping up with previous passions and hobbies.
Read our brochure 'Life-enriching activities' for more information about life in our care homes.
Read our brochure
Activities and Events Partnerships
As part of our bespoke life-enrichment programmes, we host a number of live virtual events in the home on a regular basis through a number of partnerships with places of interest and world class performance companies
Life at Alice Grange Care Home
Tools and trades history society
Staff and residents at Barchester’s Alice Grange care home in Kesgrave Ipswich invited Keith Hillman from Tools and trades history society and his Grandson Alfie to talk about and demonstrate many tools from the past and talking about the history of these tools.
Reminiscing and talking about these tools brought back so many memories of family members of our residents who used these in their trades.
The staff and residents got into the spirit of the afternoon and many questions were put to Keith who was very informative as was Alfie who is learning so much from his Grandad.
Tools and Trades History society were established in 1983 as a Charity, their aim is to advance the education of the general public in the history and development of hand tools and their use and of the people and trades that use them.
General Manager,Raciel Sagun, said: “We welcome many guest speakers to our home and our residents enjoy the talk and demonstrations, finding out so much about their past and reminiscing along the way brings back so many memories.
Shrove Tuesday we went on a flipping frenzy
Our residents had a delightful day with so much going on we started the day with a Q and A with some interesting facts about Shrove Tuesday.
We then held a pancake-flipping contest between staff and residents and so much laughter could be heard, and to finish off the day we made pancakes and the best topping of what we all traditionally have and came out on top was lemon and sugar.
Residents wishes come true
Residents at Alice Grange are treated to a treat when they are residents of the day
Making our residents wishes come true something so simple that brings so much joy
Mary asked to go for a walk in the garden. Something so simple, but really made her day.
Andy wanted breakfast at the local pub, of which he really enjoyed
Brian asked for a box of chocolates he does have a sweet tooth as does Margaret whose favourite Chocolate is mint chocolate.
Dagmer,Michael, Daphne and Yvonne asked to go to the Garden centre at B and Q and we purchased some colourful plants for our gardens and for their rooms
Gladys asked for a new word search book She enjoys doing these every day.
These wishes are making everyone happy and it just goes to show that a little goes a long way.
Love is all around us and celebration of long service award
We celebrated Valentine's Day with sweet gifts for all our residents with a special message and crochet heart as a keepsake.
We finished off the day with a Valentine's party with entertainment from the very talented Georgina Cristiano as we celebrated Clinical lead Grace 15 year Service with Barchester Alice Grange.
Congratulations Grace
Bailey - The therapy dog
We welcomed Bailey our new therapy dog, Bailey recently passed all her exams with her owner Jools at Therapy Dogs Nationwide and is now our therapy dog at Alice Grange.
Bailey and Jools will be visiting us weekly.
Bailey is so gentle and calming to all that meet her and our residents are looking forward to these regular visits.
Music Therapy
Music therapy thanks to talented brother and sister duo, Grace and James Harman. Both gifted students of music, Grace and James entertained the residents with their beautiful medley of music through the decades.
Grace and James have a long history of playing at Alice Grange, they have been frequent visitors over the years. Kind-hearted Grace first visited the home when she was at Kesgrave High School and she comes back regularly to play to the residents during the holidays, everyone very much looks forward to her visits.
One resident in particular, Michael McNaughton, a keen pianist for many years, took the opportunity to join Grace at the piano. Michael, who lives with dementia, played the piano at church for many years and has a gift for picking up any tune and being able to play it by ear. He jumped at the chance to critique Grace’s performance and play some tunes for her in return which everyone loved.
Michael added: “I’m always happiest when I am playing the piano. It was lovely to hear Grace and James play, I felt so inspired that I had to join in. It was a wonderful afternoon, I do hope Grace didn’t mind me stealing the limelight a little!”
