Activities at Lancaster Grange Care Home

What a wonderful few days here at our care home, Lancaster Grange. Spreading the love with flowers and arrangements, going hand in hand with today, being 'Valentine’s Day', we’ve certainly celebrated in style.

A fabulous performance by Linda Simms was held this afternoon, playing both clarinet and saxophone in our community coffee shop, which evoked many happy memories for our residents. Linda happily performed songs from the shows, along with love songs, enjoyed by all the community.

To our delight, we thoroughly enjoyed delicious strawberries dipped in chocolate, along with delicate pastries, all baked here by our second chef, Nomin. A great time for our residents here at Lancaster Grange, stimulating our minds, bodies and souls with music, great food and company!

Wishing you all a very special 'Valentine’s Day’ from us all here at Lancaster Grange.  

Over the last few days, here at our care home, Lancaster Grange, we have been busy with our weekly life enrichment programme.

Welcoming back, Chris from Creative Paths CIC for our second week of our watercolour workshop. This week we embraced painting cats & dogs, with great resident interaction. We can’t wait for next week!

We also welcomed back, for the first time this year, members from FADS for our 'singing for the brain afternoon.' A great week so far, with lots going on and to join in with loved ones.       

We extend a warm welcome to our friends from Claypole Church of England Primary School.

The children kindly brought handmade Christmas cards to our community coffee shop where are residents were patiently waiting, they read stories to our residents, and sang Christmas songs together.

Our resident Margaret was delighted when they sang 'Happy Birthday' to her and made her day extra special.

The children then took the time to visit the residents' rooms around our home, singing Christmas carols and sharing Christmas cheer and joy.

The children proudly sang Christmas carols along our corridors, spreading happiness and joy to all.

This had such a powerful impact, especially on our nursing community of Thoresby.

Our intergenerational friendship with Claypole School is truly wonderful, and we are grateful to the children, teachers, and parents for making yesterday afternoon such a joyous and memorable occasion. 

Here, at our home, Lancaster Grange, today, we have incorporated and recognised International Men's Day into our daily life enrichment programme.    

This morning we all enjoyed a fun-filled morning with Simon from Waleys Dart Days.

We had such an engaging, entertaining, social and physical game of darts incorporating and enabling residents with a variety of needs to have fun and enjoy themselves.

We continued our day with a cold yet enjoyable visit to our local pub, The Tawny Owl as always welcoming our residents to enjoy a drink in our local community, building friendships together.

On this day, International Men’s Day, we just wanted to recognise all the wonderful men in our lives: our grandfathers, fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, cousins, friends and neighbours.    

This morning, we had the pleasure of welcoming the RAFA Newark Branch into our home.

https://rafanewark.co.uk/

Our residents were kindly presented with a unique painting of a Lancaster Bomber. Today was a perfect day as we celebrated Patrick’s birthday, a keen aviation enthusiast.

Members of today’s group happily celebrated and enjoyed spending time with our residents socially, getting to know them.

A great morning of community engagement within our care home, Lancaster Grange, building new friendships and connections.  

Pancake Day, here at Lancaster Grange, brought a smile to everyone’s face! This afternoon, our Life Enrichment team delivered pancakes around our home, visiting all communities and residents' rooms.

Our Second Chef, Nomin, and the hospitality team, worked hard in preparing freshly made pancakes, with tasty oranges, lemons, fresh fruits and a delicious chocolate sauce to complement it.

Our residents, family members and staff were thrilled to receive a pancake, making everyone’s afternoon extra special. The simple mix of pancake batter brought joy and happiness to our home, evoking many happy memories for our residents and visiting families.

The favourite was certainly with sugar, lemons and oranges, a traditional flavour that led to many stories of pancakes at home.

We discussed Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday, as some call it. Many shared 'it’s the time for us to eat pancakes or for the children to enjoy a pancake race.' We asked ourselves, what does Shrove Tuesday have to do with pancakes? 

Before Lent fasting, people traditionally used up ingredients they are not allowed to eat during the next 40 days, especially ingredients that will spoil, like eggs and milk, and a great way to use up these ingredients is making pancakes! They shared 'That is how Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent, became known as Pancake Day, by using up all the ingredients in the cupboards'

We embraced our Pancake Day, stimulating many senses, enjoying time together and also popping into our residents' rooms to include them in today’s experience. Wishing you all a 'Happy Pancake Day', from us all here at Lancaster Grange.  

We held our first ‘Veterans Coffee Afternoon’, of 2026 with a fun twist here at Lancaster Grange. Residents were joined by members of our local community, RAF Veterans of the RAFA Balderton Branch. 

We brought colour, fun, laughter and excitement indoors for our ‘Fancy Dress Bingo.' Veterans played alongside residents, freely chatting and joining in with the fancy dress code.

Congratulations to both Pat and Elsie for both winning a full house. 

Today at our Care Home, Lancaster Grange, we had great fun celebrating National Cupcake Day.

This morning we started off with festive baking. We had a great time making traditional vanilla cupcakes in this morning's baking club, decorating with edible decorations.

Our residents happily came together for their baking experience, sharing tips and stories about baking at home around Christmastime.

This afternoon during our games, we got to sample and enjoy our delicious cupcakes.

We received a lot of joy in sharing our masterpieces with our residents and care team in our upstairs communities.

Spreading the joy of cupcakes!!

We are proud to share Lancaster Grange celebrated National Cupcake Day with great success.   

Here at Lancaster Grange yesterday afternoon, we held our Monthly Veteran’s Coffee afternoon. This week we indulged in a fun game of prize bingo!!

We all had a great afternoon, lots of laughter and social engagement, making new friends with members of the Balderton Rafa Association.

We are looking forward to December's Christmas event and our themed bingo dress-up afternoon in the New Year.

We have made some incredible memories this year with this fantastic group, and we are so proud to share our community link and friendship.

Our residents were thrilled with the prize donations and the opportunity to share the joy of chocolates around our home.

Our residents enjoyed listening to Care Assistants Carrie and Prashant, about their experiences of celebrating Diwali yesterday at our Songs of Praise service.

Recognising the festival of Light, Prashant, a practising Hindu, originally from Nepal, explained how he will be celebrating over the next five days, as from today.

Diwali is India's biggest and most important holiday of the year. The festival gets its name from the row of clay lamps that Indians light outside their homes to symbolise the inner light that protects themselves from spiritual darkness. This festival is as important to Hindus as the Christmas holiday is to Christians.

Care Assistant Carrie, shared her experiences of living in India and seeing the Diwali evening parades. Residents carried on this morning in Creative Crafting, decorating glass jars with tissue paper and embellishments to be lite. 

We have certainly enjoyed 'Magical Moments' in our community of Memory Lane over the last couple of days, here at our care home, Lancaster Grange. We warmly welcome back 'Stone Street Sounds', a wonderful company that offers a stimulating interactive musical experience.

This session features music that specialises in nostalgic, memory-lane, sing-along songs along with visual, interactive pictures reminiscing through the years.

A magical experience for us all to enjoy, with residents attending from all communities, bringing tears of joy and evoking many memories.

We're certainly looking forward to welcoming them back! We had a wonderful time. Our residents were thrilled to be able to request songs and enjoy the picture memories to go along.      

In preparation for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, residents came together in our Sherwood Community Cafe here yesterday morning at Lancaster Grange.

Our residents mixed, chopped and stuffed apples, making our homemade bird seed feeders to hang on our real Christmas tree.

A brilliant way to repurpose our garden Christmas tree for all to enjoy, we are hoping to attract garden birds for the birdwatching weekend, which residents will be able to view from our café windows.

Big Garden Birdwatch is the world’s largest garden wildlife survey. Every year, hundreds of thousands of nature lovers like you take part, helping to build a picture of how garden birds are faring.  

We proudly hold our own ‘Songs of Praise Service’ every Sunday morning here at Lancaster Grange, for all residents of all our communities to gather together for a spiritual service.

Our Activities team prepare and engage a service with hymns, poems, prayers and discussions, with different diverse topics, to enhance our spiritual wellbeing.

Today Cherilyn held a service recognising ‘National Tree Week’, which is celebrating its 50th year.

The residents discussed how trees appear in the Bible, in many scriptures and the significant meanings behind them.

We discussed our appreciation for trees, why they are so important in the ecosystem and to humans.

Cherilyn brought items from home for a ‘show and tell’; Ebony, Petrified wood, Jasper and Jet. 
And what do they all have in common? They all were once a tree!!    

Our residents here at Lancaster Grange, have been thoroughly enjoying their Life Enrichment Programme with a variety of community outings offered.

Our residents have ventured out into the community this week over to Hardy's Farndon farm shop and café, enjoying shopping for local produce and enjoying coffee & cake.

Today we took a trip over to Waitrose & Partners in Newark to start our Christmas shopping.

We have also had lots going on in our home this week and our residents have joined communities together for their dining experiences each day.

Our resident, Ann, wanted to share the pictures and show their dining experience, expressing it had a wonderful community feeling, all being together.  

At our care home, Lancaster Grange, we  recognised with a huge amount of fun and laughter The International Day of Older Persons.

This day is celebrated globally on October 1st as the United Nations International Day of Older Persons. We joined and made our own community and marked this age-friendly community day with fun laughter and celebrations here at Lancaster Grange.

This year’s UK theme is: Building Belonging: Celebrating the power of our social connections. We threw a fun and creative party here at Lancaster Grange, celebrating in style and embracing our lives together.

A fantastic whole-home approach enabled joining of communities and a wonderful experience for us all. Thank you to all who made this day possible for our residents here at Lancaster Grange.