Activities at Fountains Care Home

Residents and staff at Fountains have marked Mental Health Awareness Week with a variety of activities based on this year’s theme, "Nature".

Nature is essential to our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing, so we took the opportunity to hop onboard our minibus and head to Brueton Park in Solihull. Our residents were delighted to be able to get out and about in a peaceful park setting and be at one with nature. We took a leisurely walk around the lake, stopping to feed the ducks and geese. And then took a little rest in the sunshine with an ice cream. 

Our residents have also kept busy this week with different physical activities. From Armchair Exercises with the Green Goddess, to a wonderful outdoor Bowles & Skittles session. It’s been a fabulous opportunity to work as a team, have fun and share in the joy of being active. 

Residents also tuned in to a live talk on the Value of Mindfulness to Emotional Health. We heard about the benefits of practicing mindfulness in our everyday lives and we are very much looking forward to developing our mindfulness skills in future activities. 

It’s been a really wonderful week at Fountains and our residents have got fully involved in all the fun, making the most of the opportunity to enjoy nature and the environment around us.

Fountains’ residents and staff very much enjoyed celebrating National Vegetarian Week this week.  The fun began with a live cooking demonstration from professional chef Alex at Vegetarian For Life. Alex cheerfully talked us through his demonstration of how to make a selection of vegetarian dishes. There was Coronation ‘Chicken’, a Borlotti Bean and Dill plate, Greek Fritters with Tzatziki, and Banana Bread. 

Our fantastic kitchen team put together a marvellous spread of the dishes for our residents to sample whilst they watched the demonstrations. For many residents this was the first time they’d tried vegetarian cuisine, and although it was new to them, it went down a treat. 

Everyone enjoyed sampling all the different flavours, however, it was the deliciously moist banana bread that came out as the top choice here at Fountains! 

We’re all looking forward to exploring more vegetarian options throughout the year.

Fountains residents and staff celebrated VE Day with a lively day filled with fun, music and dancing.

Once again our fabulous kitchen team created a spectacular selection of refreshments: high tea with a selection of sandwiches, freshly baked cakes, cream and jam filled scones and, of course, a few jugs of Pimm’s

In the afternoon, residents enjoyed coming together to celebrate the occasion with a fabulous garden performance from our special guest Ruby Ann Sings. Ruby filled the home with her beautiful voice and sang songs from the 1940s with a sprinkling of rock ‘n’ roll classics from the 50s. 

Our residents had a wonderful time, clapping along to their favourite songs and cheering on our own dancing duos who were keen to take to the floor as usual. 

To see a clip of Ruby's performance then please visit our Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/BarchesterFountains/

It was so special for our residents to hear live music again and the weather did not dampen the day!  It was a joyous occasion, and certainly a day to remember.

Fountains residents and staff got their thinking caps on for some competitive fun at the Age UK Solihull online speed quiz. 

We all thoroughly enjoy the Age UK Quiz as it’s fast and fun so everyone was excited and raring to go. Thinking fast and registering our answers as quickly as we could, brought about about a lot of laughter.

With questions on sport, movies, music and general knowledge, there was something for everyone and lots of  opportunity for everyone to shine.

As always, it was a great evening with a 7th place finish for Team Fountains. Not quite the top spot but as they say, it’s all about the taking part 

Thanks again to Age UK Solihull – another great community activity, very much enjoyed and all for a great cause.

Residents and staff at Fountains care home In Shirley, Solihull enjoyed a splendid afternoon taking part in a Cocktail-Making Masterclass to celebrate Cinco De Mayo.

Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to become Mixologists, learning all about the ingredients, and then creating and sampling delicious Mimosas and Mexican Mojitos.

Of course, no celebration would be complete without some dancing. Soon Mariachi music filled the air and everyone had a wonderful afternoon celebrating together. 

After a fun time, we relaxed and watched some traditional Mexican music and dancing. Our residents were amazed at the beauty of the dance steps.

It was a great afternoon and the perfect way to spend a rainy day.

Fountains residents and staff had great fun taking part in The 100 Challenge to celebrate what would have been Captain Sir Tom Moore’s 101st birthday.

The aim of the challenge is to set up your own individual activity based on the number 100. So here at Fountains we set ourselves the task of baking and decorating 100 cupcakes. 

Our wonderful kitchen team organised the baking and made 100 delicious cakes for our residents and staff to decorate. 

As a team, we spent the afternoon adding colourful frosting and sprinkles to our bakes. 

After a discussion with our residents it was agreed that we would donate our 100 cakes to the fantastic doctors and nurses at Solihull Hospital. Sir Tom raised more than £32 million for the NHS and so we wanted to continue spreading joy with the wonderful staff. 

Together our activities coordinator and maintenance man delivered the cakes on behalf of Fountains and the nursing staff were delighted and very grateful. 

Thank you to the hardworking staff at Solihull Hospital for your continued hard work. And thank you to Sir Tom’s family for creating such a wonderful event for the nation to take part in.