Activites at Fordmill Care Home

We all love a good boogie at Fordmill anyway, so having our first Dementia Disco to conclude our Dementia Action Week seemed very fitting. Music brings such joy to everyone in so many different ways, but allowing our residents to reminisce with a select playlist of their favourite songs or bands with gentle volume and lighting, created more inclusive participation.  

We were also quite lucky that this coincided with our local community’s annual music festival. We therefore worked together with the festival organisers and allowed residents the opportunity to show support to the festival-goers with a special message for them all. Keeping these connections to our community allows our residents to really feel part of it all and be seen. They could also be heard as they sang their hearts out too!

Our little visitors were weely, weely well-behaved when they made a visit to the local Charleton Fruit Farm to entertain our residents. Fordmill is situated in an agricultural spot with many of our residents being ex-farmers or brought up on the farm, so they were delighted to be in amongst the piggies. 

The little squeals as they got their bottoms scratched had everyone in hysterics. Even the piggy smells had residents reminiscing of their early mornings on the farm and cleaning out the pigstys. It was amazing to see the residents so engaged and asking the farmers all about their choosing of variety of pig.      

Our VE celebrations brought lots of different stories and emotions to the surface. In the days prior to the 80th year celebration, residents reminisced about helping mothers with food rations, to the emotional toll of hearing the warning sirens.  

We made a display with the help of our local Air Station Museum, which was a great talking point. We therefore decided to mark the anniversary with the happiness that the street party brought all those years ago.  From the looks and the menu, to the flags, music and sunshine, our residents partied in style with families and friends, grateful for the moment and paying homage to the people and ways of life that were lost but not forgotten.    

Staff and residents at Fordmill  dusted off their dancing shoes for the launch of their new Dementia Disco initiative which aptly concluded their activities celebrating Dementia Action Week.  

Knowing how much their residents living with dementia love to dance and sing, the activities team, Julia and Moira at Fordmill Care Home came up with the genius idea of a dementia-friendly disco.  The team also invited along friends and family to the first official dementia-friendly disco. 
 

Fordmill marked the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day in style by throwing a 1940s street party for everyone to enjoy.  The residents were joined by family, friends and members of the public who joined staff in commemorating this special day.

Montrose Air Station Museum kindly donated an array of vintage pieces for a display in the home, which garnered lots of interest and started many a reminiscence discussion amongst residents.  Fordmill were honoured to work alongside this local organisation to bring their residents this opportunity of nostalgia. 
 

Who doesn’t love a visit from the Easter Bunny!  We recently had a visit from our hopping mad friend when a local nursery also joined us to sing to our residents and play some Easter games with them.  Our residents had fun decorating eggs with the children then singing along to the Bunny Song.

These intergenerational visits to celebrate important events such as Easter allow us all to reminisce on our own traditions and learn new ways too. Discussions about hot cross buns and their significance turned to… but how do you eat your crème egg when the chocolate appeared? Safe to say everyone had full bellies, and the Easter Bunny was worn out after another year’s antics! 

We are very lucky to have a beautiful, serene garden offering our residents many opportunities over the seasons. We love it so much that we offer our community to feel free and use the space respectively. So when the first warm days appeared, we had as many walks outdoors as we could, laced with lots of chatter about the hope that Spring brings.  

Our residents were so happy when the nursery children came in to have a play and wanted to sit and watch them. However, the children came over to interact, and before we knew it, we were all filling watering cans for their water games, blowing bubbles and throwing balls for them to catch. These impromptu moments of activity are so amazing and cherished and keep our residents feeling young!

We love big games when everyone can take part and get lost in the excitement.  The Grand National celebrations are no different at Fordmill.  We made a large floor based interactive game complete with horses and fences to jump over.  

Residents and families sat in teams and rolled their dices to battle it out to be the winners.  And of course, we dressed for the occasion with our fancy hats and dined on fresh fruits and ice cream with some sparkling Prosecco.  Residents enjoyed being encouraged to shout along for their team horse, like you would at the horses and the excitement bubbled over when the winning confetti cannons went off!  

Here at Fordmill, we are very proud of our wonderful staff, and we really appreciate the work they put into every single day by looking after our residents at a very high standard.  

Today was International Women’s Day and to acknowledge it, we took the opportunity and cherished our staff with a little treat.   

The entire day was soaked in loving embraces as staff were singing songs throughout the home, and residents were encouraged to dance in the lounges.