Activities at Cherry Trees Care Home

As part of Barchester's life Enrichment programme, staff and residents at Cherry Trees enjoyed an afternoon of reminiscing and celebration, as Queen Elizabeth II turns 95, marking a significant milestone for the monarch.

The activities team put out the fine China, decorated the home, and our lovely Head Chef, Ayshat, prepared an afternoon tea with fresh salmon/cucumber sandwiches and homemade scones with jam, and not forgetting the clotted cream.

Residents enjoyed reminiscing as they watched the Queen's biography and life story. Celebrations were more muted this year as the occasion falls only days after the funeral of her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh.

Like many others across the country and around the world, we are sending our warmest wishes to Queen Elizabeth II for her 95th birthday. I know this birthday will be difficult, and our thoughts continue to be with her and the entire royal family.

We’ve all been through such a difficult time and this feels like such a big step on the way to getting back to some normality.

Now that everyone in the home has had both doses, we can start to work towards getting life in the home back to a new normal, but we know there is a lot of work to do in order to get there.

There is such a sense of relief. We are all so pleased to have had both doses of the vaccine.

It will help to keep our residents safe; we know there is still a long road ahead of us, but this is a big step towards getting back to some sort of normal.

Easter is a busy time of year every year and this year was no different. We started the Easter festivities off with a virtual Easter wreath making workshop, held by the wonderful Joanna from White Ivy Flowers in Alcester, who supplied us with some amazing greenery and flowers and talked us through what we were using and how best to arrange them.

On Easter Sunday, the residents enjoyed watching the BBC Easter service, which featured reverend Justin Welby sharing his Easter message of hope and resurrection in a joyful celebration, live from the stunning setting of Canterbury Cathedral.

Residents enjoyed this with a delicious hot cross bun and, in the afternoon, we went a bit more local with a virtual service from the fantastic Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Easter was a lovely time at Cherry Trees and everyone got to enjoy a delicious bit of chocolate as well.

On the 17th March it was St. Patrick's Day, a celebration of the patron saint of Ireland and all things Irish. In the morning, we got in to the spirit by making some beautiful Shamrock sun catchers and we got to enjoy some delicious Irish snacks. 

In the afternoon, we took part in the green-themed quiz, accompanied by some traditional Irish music, and then followed by some very tasty Irish coffees.

Everyone had a wonderful day!

Over the week of the 8th to the 14th March, we decided here at Cherry Trees to celebrate a whole week of amazing women.

It started with International Women’s Day and ended with Mother’s Day. We spent the week looking at important historical women and took part in many workshops. Some of our favourites were all about indulging our glamourous side with a lip balm making workshop and a decorative scented bag for hand bags or wardrobes.

The lip balms were made from cocoa butter, coconut oil, shea butter and a bit of bee’s wax. We then added a little bit of vanilla and honey for taste and a tiny bit of lipstick for colour. We had a lot of fun looking at the ingredients and deciding what colour and flavour we wanted 

The scented bags were made using gauze bag, dried flowers and rice that had been scented with essential oils and dyed with food colouring. The blue rice was lavender scented and the pink is geranium and rose. They smelt amazing and were fun to make. 

The residents enjoyed both workshops and are looking forwards to more exciting workshops in the future.

In the morning we had some of Alcester Academy year 11 and year 12 girls join us virtually via Zoom to read us some beautiful poems from their favourite books. In the afternoon, the lovely year 2 children read parts from the book they chose and they showed off their brilliant costumes too! They all did a wonderful job and we really enjoyed listening to them.