Activities at Lochduhar Care Home

As well as marking Remembrance Day by wearing poppies and watching the televised service, residents were delighted when the children from North West Nursery delivered a very special hand-made poppy wreath for the home.  Residents also joined the nursery for a Skype call where the children ask Residents who had served questions and were amazed with air-raid shelters, gas masks and the experiences which were shared.

Lochduhar commemorated Remembrance Day on Sunday 08th November, where they joined the rest of the United Kingdom in holding a two-minute silence at 11am.

Its Autumn time and the residents of Lochduhar had fun in entering the Barchester Harvest competition. They had a wonderful time and a lot of fun making the Worzel Gummidge scarecrow and putting their harvest display together.  Residents also enjoyed decorating the homes front entrance with hay bales kindly donated by a local farmer along with seasonal fruits from the home’s local Tesco superstore.  Thank you to all who supported the home.

Residents at Lochduhar care home recently enjoyed Skype calls and receiving colourful pictures from the local nursery, North West Nursery in Dumfries who treated the residents to virtual skype calls sharing stories.  Residents at the home enjoyed [insert details of the engagement] and it meant such a lot as visitors are currently not able to visit the home at this time.

Gillian Ward, General Manager said: “In these unprecedented times, ensuring residents feel engaged and connected within our local community is more important than ever. Our residents really enjoyed the session.  We provide a wide range of physical, mental and spiritual activities at Lochduhar as part of the life enrichment programme for residents, and this one was very popular! We have also adapted ways to keep residents active, whilst ensuring that the group activities are smaller, adhering to social distancing advice”

Before lockdown, children from North West Nursery visited the residents on a weekly basis. Both generations working together has a huge benefit to both age groups. The residents really missed the children coming in to do activities with them. The nursery children sent the residents their lockdown diary. This was a book of all the lovely things they had been doing at home when they couldn’t go to nursery or see their friends. Now the children are back at nursery, residents are now skyping the nursery children on a weekly basis. Each week they have a theme and they can chat about different things.

Ellie Activity Coordinator said “It is so lovely to see how the residents and children react when they see each other on the tablet screen. The residents asked the children if they would draw them all pictures to put up in the home. It’s so nice to still be able to have a connection with the nursery during these uncertain times”. Residents and the nursery children took it in turns to sing songs to each other on the first skype call. One of the residents said “ It’s great to see their wee faces, I wish they could come over here and we could play together

Lochduhar celebrated World Alzheimer’s day on the 21st of September. Residents enjoyed looking at their photographs and reminiscing about memories from the past. One resident commented on one of his photos “That’s my family, look at the boys they look so happy”. It was a really nice afternoon and residents showed each other their photographs and had a good chat over a cuppa.

With lockdown restrictions, Birthday celebrations aren't quite what everyone had planned but here at Lochduhar resident Jane celebrated her birthday in style by enjoying a walk in the homes garden and picking a bunch of heather she had spotted to have her room.

Residents and staff also joined together in singing the birthday girl a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday.