Activities at Atfield House Care Home

At Atfield House, we enjoy our Environment. We have started a Vegetable plot and a kitchen garden, which already produced plenty, to add to our Chef`s soup! The rain-water has been harnessed to our 2 collector Cylinders, which we use to water the plants. We have now planted a wild flower garden, with a Bug and Beetle House and a Butterfly House, that our Resident assembled .  The gardens looks great and are colourful, to be enjoyed by Residents and Visitors. We are now keeping our eyes open to spot the small kind of visitors : Bumble- Bees and Bees and Butterflies!  The Birds have already discovered the Bird-Bath and use it to keep themselves clean! Our Bird-Feeders on our Residents windows and in the garden, have been known to have their own visitors, Elizabeth reported 7 visits on one day! . How-ever, Residents, Staff and Visitors are intrigued and excited to watch the progress of our Mother-Duck and her recently hatched nine Chicks! Beryl said: this is better than watching TV! We feel excited to welcome all these visitors, who turn up in our garden or the roof top, may be for fish on Friday ? We will continue to nurture our Environment, and our Green Team Ambassador, Stuart loves to help watering the plants, and is well versed with gardening tips!

Atfield House Care Home celebrated English Wine Week with a party of English Wine tasting with a Jazz performance by Tracey O`Conner. Her voice was smooth and rich and it was great with our Wine tasting adventure. We started with a sparkling vine, called Louis Pommery Brut from Hampshire. More Music, savoury snacks and then we chose to try a Rose Wine from the Balfour Winery in Staplehurst. This Balfour Rose became the first English wine in 2004, to win a gold medal and Trophy at the International Wine Challenge. After we read all this specifications, we enjoyed this wine with more music and different cheeses to accompany the taste and as suggested by our Residents. There was also Camembert, as suggested by Pamela in our last Resident meeting!! The last wine to taste was a red wine from the Three Mills winery in Norfolk! Also great! But at this stage, we decided to switch to our cream cakes, that our Chef prepared and a great chocolate cake with tea and coffee. After all, we wanted every-one to get home safely! We had a great and joyful afternoon, with Family Members joining in and many appreciated the lovely voice of Tracey. We are looking forward for her next visit in August with Jazz on the lawn, weather permitting! Our Residents can sample the rest of the Wine another Day!

Stephen, is a resident Artist at Atfield House. Since he has been here, he has produced many sketches and gifted them to staff members. But now we are privileged to see lots of his Art-work, that he has produced over his life-time of painting. Atfield House will host an Art Exhibition and Sale of his work on Sunday the 21St of July from 2-4pm. We are excited to invite the wider public to this special event. We are looking forward to meet many new faces and hope for Stephen to enjoy this very special event in his life!

Mr Stephen Turrell started exploring art at a young age but only made it as an artist when his daughter, Sally, at a young age came home from school upset one day because she couldn’t paint something. After helping Sally he rediscovered his love for art which continues until this very day. Mr Turrells art has been hung and sold at the Royal Academy of Art which in fact gave him the title ‘Mr Stephen Turrell E.R.A’ ( exhibitor royal academy). Stephen is also a keen sketcher who has sketches and paintings in many places and a few different countries. Many family and friends have a piece of his artwork or a sketch on display at home. Mr Turrell has sent paintings to the late Queen Elizabeth who acknowledged them and responded with thanks.  Stephen paints from his creative imagination, knowledge of places or past experiences. As well as being an artist Stephen is a loving, kind, funny and gentle family man  who adores his family who in return love and adore him.

A group of Residents from Atfield House wanted to visit the open studios in Redlees  park, which is in our close neighbourhood .Stephen, our resident artist, had special interest to see works of art by  local artists. The weather welcomed a trip out and it was an uplifting and interesting experience to see the artists in their studios and at  work. We also got to talk to some artists about the topics, that inspire their work.  Stephen our Artist was very interested and he is able to see art in all his  surroundings; even when we sat down for a cuppa, he saw faces in the marks of paint, that had been left on the table. He has the eye of the inspired painter ! We are also looking forward to host an art exhibition of his work at Atfield House this summer. All our Residents enjoyed the trip out and see and feel the atmosphere in this stables, that had been converted into art studios.

As part of our Dementia action week, and to enjoy our great new garden furniture, Atfield House enjoyed a Garden party in our beautiful Memory lane Courtyard. Residents and their family and friends enjoyed spending the afternoon together, colouring flowers, that relax the mind, enjoying refreshments and watching a thousand bubbles with myriad of colours, streaming across the lawn. It was a truly beautiful afternoon with lots of sunshine and we enjoyed sitting around the tables, under the canopy of our Sunshade, chatting, colouring and eating. The green school pupils joined us with a quiz and informative facts about the Cadbury`s chocolate and the history of this factory as we were so lucky to receive 2 boxes, filled with Cadbury`s Bars. The wrappers dated back to all different years, starting with year 1915. Most of our Residents remember the wrapper from 1940`s and the 1960`s . Rosemary still remembered  the chocolate wrapper from 1940 and also enjoyed the chocolate in the wrapper!!.Everyone had a taster, but it had to be eaten fast, as it melted in our warm hands. Cadbury is celebrating their 200 year anniversary and has partnered with Alzheimer`s Research UK, donating £2000.000 to support research to one day find a cure for dementia and drive awareness of the condition. And we thank them for their generous gift to Atfield House this year. Chocolates are known to improve the feeling of well-being and most people do like to eat chocolate!

The London School of Ballet performed for our Residents and Visitors a delightful and dramatic rendering of the fairy tale Snow White last Sunday afternoon. We were all literally spell- bound by this performance, as the Dancers brought the story to life with the Queen and her mirror and Snow White and the poisoned Apple and what a delight when Snow White awoke and rose up from the ground ! Our Residents really enjoyed watching the performance and are always delighted to see the younger generation come to Atfield House. After the performance visitors,  Residents and also the performers enjoyed sharing some refreshments. We hope to see the group soon again with another of their great performances. We wish them a successful term  and  good luck to their tour around the different venues this Spring!