Activities at Cubbington Mill Care Home

Residents and staff members at Cubbington Mill Care Home celebrated the Harvest Festival recently by working together to design and bake their own Harvest Festival salt dough bread decorations and display for Barchester’s special seasonal competition.

Head Chef, Oliver Hopkins and Activities Co-ordinator, Hannah Fawcett helped residents to plait, twist and mould their salt dough into Harvest themed creations. Residents had great fun feeling and squishing the dough in their hands, they were able to get creative with added sensory fun.

Oliver used coco powder to give the dough a darker colouring and contrast against the white, this made the plaits stand out and gave them a great effect once brushed in egg wash and cooked. The coco powder once baked filled the room with a delicious chocolate smell.

After foraging for clippings from our garden with the help of our maintenance man, Waldemar Stezycki, the flowers and leaves were added into a wicker basket alongside the dough decorations. This beautiful display has been placed in our newly decorated foyer area for the postman, staff, residents and essential visitors to see!

This year’s theme for Arts in Care Homes Day is #CreativeCommunities. We started our morning by video calling our friends over at Overslade House.

Residents took part in a colouring activity to create the 2020 #ArtsinCareHomes poster. After a good chit chat, the sheets were ready to be put together to create the poster in support of this fantastic day!

We continued the festivities into the afternoon with a creative writing workshop, where residents wrote a poem based on the Autumn Equinox, Poetry has been a fantastic outlet and yet another way to get creative for #AICH2020.

The day was a great opportunity to reflect on the creative activities we provide for our residents and staff. We have done some great things during COVID-19 and enjoyed getting creative!

All aspects of the arts are explored in our home and it has been important for us to work with the local community with each project. We’ve become pros at card making, creating our own designs for Carers Week back in June and giving these to the hardworking members of staff at the home.

We were part of Creative Mojo’s ‘Your Face, Your Way’ community project, where residents saw their drawings showcased online!

Staff and residents at Cubbington Mill have celebrated Mexican Independence Day by putting on a Mexican fiesta and themed dining experience.

The dining room was decorated with beautiful bright colours which filled the room top to bottom... even the odd cactus made an appearance!

Head Chef, Oliver Hopkins, cooked traditional pork carnitas with molè and pineapple pico de gallo. This authentic dish was made with Oliver’s homegrown ancho and pasilla chiles!

While enjoying their meal, a virtual mariachi band played in the background... residents even had their own maracas to add to the beautiful music.

To look the part, they wore sombrero headbands and moustaches to further immerse themselves in this Mexican experience! Ending the afternoon with a game of pin-the-tail-o-the-donkey and cactus ring toss, followed by a singalong.

Peanut looks, feels and sounds like a real cat. Our new pet has built in sensors that responds to motion and touch; realistic soft fur, cat-like movements and technology thats sounds and feels like real purring.

Residents have been so excited to meet their new robotic pet. Peanut has had a grand tour of the home and is already getting very comfortable in the lounge, interacting and getting a pet from residents as they benefit from the therapeutic aspects of this fantastic technology.

To decide the name, staff and residents at Cubbington Mill put their choices into a random name generator, which chose Peanut to be the perfect fit for our new kitty!

Cubbington Mill hosted their very own Notting Hill Carnival with steelpan drum music was playing, decorations galore and delicious traditional Caribbean foods to choose from. Residents have loved reading Notting Hill Carnival facts and looking at pictures from the event as they wore their handmade masks and headbands.

Celebrating and learning about different cultures is really important to staff and residents here at the home. They are immersed into rich culture and are able to learn about things that they don’t already know through music, film, food and more!

It has been a fantastic day full of colour and fun and residents cannot wait to see which culture they will be learning about next!

We began our week of Indian activities with a virtual tour around India and learnt some words in the many Indian languages! Residents are excited to say ‘Namaste’ to the Carers and Nurses and impress them with all they have learnt.

On Tuesday, we made our very own traditional spiced Mehndi biscuits which we decorated with beautiful designs using black icing. Staff and residents loved the cinnamon taste! Residents then learnt how to Bollywood dance followed by watching a Bhangra dancing competition. They saw some of the world’s best groups give amazing performances... and even had a go at it themselves!

Cubbington Mill then ended the celebrations with a huge party which involved themed dining and traditional music in the beautifully decorated dining room. Activities co-ordinator Hannah Fawcett and Resident Ambassador Gerald Waterfield covered the walls with gold foiled curtains, hung Indian flags and colourful decorations to create an immersive colourful display.

Head Chef, Oliver Hopkins, prepared Onion Bhaji’s and Samosas to start which was then followed by a homemade Curry, Rice and Aloo side enjoyed with naan bread. Some of the residents were experiencing flavours they had never tried before and one resident even asked if we could have Indian food every day! The festivities didn’t stop here as staff member Jay joined our celebrations wearing a beautiful traditional outfit as well as displaying another on a mannequin for everyone to admire. We ended the afternoon by trying different Indian sweet treats and discussing all we had learnt throughout the week.